In an article he wrote in 1984, which was published in the New Straits Times, Ramli recounted the time his charity performance was called off three days before the event.

“The booking for the auditorium was rejected for the reason that a Muslim performing Indian classical dance might cause too much controversy,” he wrote.

The performance, he said, was to help raise funds to buy a heart machine for a local hospital.

The article was posted on the Sutra Foundation’s Facebook page.

The hospital, Ramli lamented, was subsequently deprived of “sizeable financial aid” and left those who had been preparing for the event frustrated and demoralised.

“I was deprived of practising my art and making a living.”

Ramli went on to say that a Muslim doing Indian classical dance posed a real dilemma “peculiar to Malaysia”, adding however that the conflict was more in the minds of those who had a myopic view of what Malays should be doing for a living.

“The apparent conflict is that the Indian classical dance is a temple dance and, therefore, essentially religious, a fact that cannot be negated.”

He also said that in Malaysia, dance is treated as polarised and separate entities “to be manufactured, catalogued and compared at a conference table”. It is also exploited to further ends other than those in the interest of the dance form, he added.

Ramli said he was slowly being made conscious of being a Malay involved in Indian classical dance “rather than a dancer giving his utmost in his medium, that is, dance”.

Last Saturday, UTM confirmed it had cancelled Ramli’s talk on how dance transcended race on the advice of its Islamic centre, as the university did not want to “offend any party”.

The centre had advised against holding the talk, citing its “suitability factor”. But Ramli said this excuse was “weak and unacceptable”.