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. Neighbourhood groups sustain it with months of preparation in painting, movement, and music. In August 2026, a well-known actor and writer, V. K. Sreeraman, wrote on his social media that he found the practice a deformation and that using such bodies—with enlarged 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. One day later, Sreeraman apologised.
The apology could have remained here as a corrected indiscretion. Yet the nuance lies in how the apology was offered. He acknowledged that his words had been immature and had caused harm. At the same time, he recorded his desire for the artists and organisers to make the dance "more beautiful". He withdrew the offence while retaining the premise. He ceased to claim that the performance was not art, instead asserting that it was an art form in need of improvement. This second judgement, which sounds conciliatory, is in reality the same as the first, merely presented with better manners.
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 possesses or lacks. A body is either beautiful or deformed; a dance is either refined or crude. From this apparent quality, one deduces whether it deserves to be called art or how much it lacks to merit such a designation. This 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 arbiter.
Therein lies the problem, and it is not one of manners. When someone asserts that a collective practice should be made "more beautiful", they arrogate to themselves the authority to decide what is missing from the traditions of others to reach a standard that they alone define and of which the practitioners were unaware. They convert a living form, governed by its own rules, into an imperfect draft of something that is not yet complete. Furthermore, they place those who perform it—those who have done so for generations—in the role of executors of a work whose quality is determined by an external judge. They are not debating a work; they are assuming 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, its own humour, and its own relationship with the body and the festival. That a corpulent body serves as a surface for tiger painting is not a defect to be corrected: it is integral to how the form functions. To ask that it be made "more beautiful" according to an alien canon is akin to asking a copla to resemble a lied more closely. One may prefer the lied. What one cannot do is treat the copla as a lied that has gone awry.
Behind all of this, I encounter once again a question that has occupied me for some time: who decides what counts as art, and from what vantage point? The habitual response, both in academic circles and in common parlance, 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, while intending to make amends, he left that model intact. He apologised for the words but retained 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 the 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).