Indu Mitha: The Woman Who Gave Bharatanatyam a Place in Pakistan

When Indu Mitha died in Dublin on 31st August 2026 at the age of 97, Pakistan lost more than a dancer. It lost one of the people who had spent decades making space for an art form that had arrived with very little institutional support. Mitha's story is inevitably connected to Partition. Born in Lahore in 1929, she left for Delhi around Partition before returning to Pakistan in 1951 after marrying Aboobaker Osman Mitha. Her elder sister, Uma, remained in India and built a career in journalism, broadcasting, and cinema. Over more than seven decades, she helped turn a classical dance tradition associated with Southern India into a living part of Pakistan’s cultural landscape.

Making Space for an Unfamiliar Art Form

Bharatanatyam had little established presence in post-Partition Pakistan. There were few institutions dedicated to teaching it, and public space for classical Indian dance was limited. Mitha nevertheless began teaching and performing, refusing to treat the absence of an existing infrastructure as a reason for the form to disappear. She taught at Lahore Grammar School and later at institutions including the Rawalpindi campus of the National College of Arts before establishing her own dance school, Mazmoon-e-Shauq.

Giving Bharatanatyam a Pakistani Voice 

Mitha found ways to make the form speak to the cultural environment around her. Among her most distinctive contributions was the composition of Bharatanatyam songs in Urdu. Traditionally, the repertoire is strongly associated with languages such as Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit. Mitha’s use of Urdu created a connection between the classical vocabulary of the dance and the language of the society in which she had chosen to practice it. Her work also explored secular and feminist themes, demonstrating that a classical form could engage with contemporary questions without losing its identity.

A Legacy Built Through Students

The significance of Mitha's career becomes clearer through the dancers who came after her. For decades, she trained students and encouraged them to develop their own relationship with the form. Among them was Amna Mawaz Khan, who studied under Mitha for 11 years and later established herself as a prominent Pakistani dancer. Her own daughter, Tehreema Mitha, also became a Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer, eventually continuing the tradition in the United States.

How She Kept Her Art Alive?

Mitha’s work was particularly significant because she continued it through periods when classical dance had limited visibility in Pakistan. She performed at private gatherings, military functions, and cultural events while simultaneously building a teaching practice. In 2020, her contribution to the arts was recognized with the President’s Award for Pride of Performance. Her later years were documented in How She Moves, a film following Mitha and her students around what was described as her final recital. By then, her importance no longer rested solely on how she danced. It rested on what existed because she had spent decades teaching.

A Legacy Beyond One Lifetime 

The most lasting part of Indu Mitha's story lies beyond the partition. She demonstrated that cultural traditions do not always remain confined to the places from which they originate. They can travel, adapt and acquire new meanings. Indu Mitha did not merely bring Bharatanatyam to Pakistan. She gave it to students, a language and a future.