82 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Chholia maitial dances can be traced back to the Khasia warriors. Pairs of dancers with swords and shields make intricate formations Governing long distances; they almost act out a mock battle. It will be seen that there is no deartli for miUitant traditions among the backward classes, scheduled castes and tribals of India who are the most cxpoited sections forming the lowest strata of society. Almost all of them still retain their dances and martial art traditions, but only as formal rituals without being able to transform them into real actions to change their condition of life. Progressive movements arc guilty of overlooking this highly charged layer of material sub-culture in which militancy is integral to the various cultural forms in India and does not have to come through a verbal/mental process. In the north, the cradle of these dance forms were the akhadas or community gymnasiums, and in sooth, a variation of these gymnasiums called the kalari, Both the akhada and the kalari propagated a sophisticated, materialist philosophy of individual and collective wellbeing with focus on the human body itself. They promoted the ancient, pre-Hindu concept of body expression, lasyajtandava (militancy with grace), which later became a formal category in classical dance. With precise understanding of anatomy and human engineering like breath, stamina, tension, flexion and control, what the akhada or kalari basically tried to achieve was to harmonize the human body in space, thus bring it closer to itself. Thus, the verticality of the body was broken to a more compact and relaxing circularity in the akhada/kalari. The idea was to infuse the human body not only with the potential for extension and contractions, but also to convert every movement to an energizing exercise. These contractions of the body later got stylized in classical dance as "Bhanga," "Aramandi59 and so on. For example, the "Aramandi", a kind of half-squatting which is the basic stance in Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Kathakali and Kuchi" pudi, is also the basic stance in wrestling (Indian and Japanese), Kalari Payattu, Silambam, Karate, Tai Chi Chuan and Thai boxing. It is abstracted as \\\€mandala in classical dance, a continuous making and breaking of squares, circles and triangles to harmonize with the circular stage symbolizing the earth/cosmos. The dances taught one how to hold the body in order to make it steady like a rock, to make it as light as a feather, to leap^ to pivot, to shift, to step forward, to retreat and to balance. Symphonies in duet and collective movements with sticks, swords,