In Kerala, during the Onam festivities, there is a popular tradition called Pulikali: men who paint their bodies as tigers and dance through the streets of Thrissur to the rhythm of percussion. It is sustained by neighbourhood groups that spend months preparing the paint, the movements, and the music. In August 2026, a well-known actor and writer, V. K. Sreeraman, wrote on his social media that he found it a deformation, and that using such bodies, with distended chests and bellies, to create art was a vulgarity that induced nausea. The performers responded by accusing him of humiliating their bodies and their work. A day later, Sreeraman apologised.

I could accept the apology and regard this as a clumsy error now rectified. However, I wish to emphasise the manner of that apology. He acknowledged his words were immature and caused harm, while simultaneously documenting his desire for the artists and organisers to make the dance “more beautiful”. He retracted the offence but retained the premise. He ceased to claim it was not art, instead asserting it was an art form in need of improvement. This secondary judgement, though it sounds conciliatory, is in reality the same as the first, merely presented with better manners.

For both judgements, the harsh and the gentle, rest upon the same conception of what art is: that its value resides in visible properties which the object either possesses or lacks. A body is beautiful or deformed, a dance is refined or coarse, and from this apparent quality one deduces whether it deserves to be called art or how far it falls short of such merit. It is an intuitive and widespread ontology: art as a property that is seen, measured by the eye, and scored. Whoever maintains this position places themselves, implicitly, in the role of the judge.

Therein lies the problem, and it is not a matter of etiquette. When someone states that a collective practice should be made “more beautiful”, they arrogate the authority to decide what a tradition lacks to reach a standard they have set and which the practitioners did not recognise. They transform a living form, governed by its own rules, into an imperfect draft of something that does not yet exist. They relegate those who perform it, those who have practised it for generations, to the role of executors of a work whose quality is determined by an external judge. They do not debate a work: they claim the right to grade the art of others.

Pulikali does not await such a grade. It is neither a failed attempt at ballet nor a draft of something more polished. It is a complete form, with its own logic, humour, and relationship to the body and the festival. That a corpulent body serves as a canvas for tiger painting is not a defect to be corrected: it is integral to how it functions. To demand it be made “more beautiful” according to an external canon is akin to asking a folk song to resemble a lied. One may prefer the lied. What one cannot do is treat the folk song as a failed lied.

Behind all this, I encounter once more a question that has occupied me for some time: who decides what counts as art, and from what vantage point? The conventional answer, both in elite and popular circles, is that art is a quality recognised at a glance, and that some eyes are more authorised than others to recognise it. This model is convenient because it divides people into two groups: those who possess the criteria and those who must improve to merit them. Sreeraman’s apology is particularly interesting precisely because, in seeking to make amends, he left that model intact. He apologised for the words while retaining the measuring rod.

What a community defended in Thrissur these past days was not merely their right not to be insulted, though that is true. It was something more difficult to articulate and more profound: that their practice is not a candidate for art awaiting approval, but art already, on its own terms rather than those of the external observer. The offence was retractable with an apology. The premise that made it possible remains, intact, awaiting the next judgement with better manners.

On open conversation

This text originates from a specific controversy in Kerala, but it is not about that controversy, nor do I intend to arbitrate a cultural debate that is not mine to settle: I am interested in the concept of art that emerges in the apology, which judges artistic value by visible properties and distributes the authority to grant it. I accept the words as accurate based on reports in the Malayalam press, and I distinguish between what is documented and what is interpretive. If anyone wishes to intervene from the perspectives of aesthetics, cultural anthropology, performance studies, or the practice of living traditions, this notebook remains open.

Sources

Kerala Tourism, institutional pages regarding Pulikali (Tiger Dance) and the Thrissur Onam festival.

The Hindu, 20 August 2026: coverage of the controversy, the response from the committees, and the apology from V. K. Sreeraman (including the translation of “make this dance form even more beautiful”).

Mathrubhumi, Malayala Manorama (Onmanorama) and Vachakam, 20 August 2026: Malayalam reproductions of the original statement and the retraction.

Onmanorama, 20 August 2026: statements by Krishna Kumarn P. N. (Ayyanthole Desam).