Community Guidelines

Last updated: 18 August 2026

Why this community matters

A stage milestone is visible for an evening. The work behind it may represent years of training by the artist, years of teaching and correction by a guru, support from a family, and a tradition passed from one generation to another.

Arangetram Registry exists to give that work lasting recognition. A Bharatanatyam artist may call the milestone an arangetram; other communities may use rangapravesham, rangapravesha, rangmanch pravesh, arangettam, or another term. Use the language of your own tradition and respect the language of someone else’s.

Who is here

The registry includes artists, gurus, families, and businesses supporting classical stage events. It includes dance, vocal, and instrumental traditions. Many artists reach major milestones while still young, so minors and their parents are part of this community too.

Every guideline below follows from two principles: give artistic work and teaching proper credit, and protect the people behind the profiles, especially young artists.

Be truthful

• Claim only a stage milestone you actually completed.
• Use the milestone terminology that is appropriate to your own tradition rather than presenting one term as universal.
• Name your real guru or teachers and describe your lineage as you were taught it.
• Upload your own supporting certificate where the platform requires one.
• Describe your experience accurately. There is no need to exaggerate.
• If you are a vendor, describe only services your business genuinely offers.

A false claim about a lineage is not a small thing. These traditions pass from teacher to student across generations, and a fabricated link misrepresents people who may not be here to correct it.

Give gurus proper credit

Students may train for years before a major stage milestone. Gurus teach, correct, refine, prepare repertoire, develop artistic judgement, and decide when a student is ready for greater responsibility on stage. A milestone therefore reflects both the artist’s sustained work and the guru’s sustained teaching.

• Naming a guru is a statement about that person as well as you. Be accurate.
• Do not claim a guru who did not teach you.
• Do not erase or minimise a teacher’s contribution in order to make a profile sound more independent.
• Traditions differ. A style, school, bani, gharana, sampradaya, or teaching method unfamiliar to you is not therefore a lesser one.
• Disagreements about parampara and lineage can be longstanding. State your own lineage; do not use the registry to attack another person’s.

Respect different ways of learning

Indian classical arts have been transmitted through many teaching settings. Some learning is now school-based, studio-based, institutional, private, or online. Other traditions preserve elements of guru-shishya parampara and immersive gurukula learning.

In Carnatic music, for example, historical guru-shishya and gurukula practice could involve close, sustained learning with the guru, including residential study in traditional forms. Do not treat one modern or traditional teaching arrangement as automatically more legitimate than another. Describe what you actually learned and from whom.

Photographs and video

• Upload only images you own or are licensed to use.
• Where identifiable people are permitted in artist or guru media, everyone shown must have agreed to appear — and where a person is a minor, their parent or guardian must have agreed.
• Performance and appropriate portrait photographs only. Nothing suggestive.
• Do not upload an image of someone else’s child.
• Vendor portfolio images must show the work, not identifiable people. Vendors must also hold the rights they attest to when uploading.

Where an artist is under 18, we do not publish their photograph publicly. It remains visible only to the people and reviewers permitted by the platform.

Contacting an artist or guru

Messages sent through the platform are read by a member of our team before they reach an artist or guru.

A good message says who you are, why you are getting in touch, and what you are asking. A message we will not forward includes one that:

• asks a young artist to meet privately or unsupervised;
• asks for photographs, personal details, or their age;
• suggests continuing the conversation elsewhere in order to avoid moderation;
• comments on someone’s appearance rather than their art;
• advertises something unrelated.

Approaching a minor outside this system after finding the artist here is a serious breach and we will act on it.

Contacting vendors

Vendors are adult businesses, so anyone may send a vendor an enquiry without creating an account. The first message is still reviewed by our team before it is forwarded.

• Ask about services, availability, pricing, products, or other legitimate event needs.
• Do not use vendor enquiries for harassment, bulk solicitation, scraping, or unrelated advertising.
• A vendor receives enquiries through the platform but does not use the platform to initiate contact with artists or families.
• Once we forward an enquiry, any later business arrangement is between the sender and the vendor. Make your own decisions about suitability, pricing, contracts, deposits, and services.

Writing about yourself or your business

• Keep contact details in the fields provided rather than hiding them inside biographies, descriptions, or other free text to route around moderation.
• Write in your own words.
• Artists and gurus should not use profiles to advertise unrelated goods or services.
• Vendors should keep listings relevant to services that support the classical-arts community and stage events.

What we do not allow

• Impersonating another artist, guru, business, school, academy, institution, or organisation.
• Publishing anyone’s personal details without permission.
• Harassment, threats, or abuse.
• Discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, region, language, gender, disability, or any similar ground.
• Sexual content, or anything sexualising a young person.
• Scraping or systematically collecting information from the platform.
• Using the registry to disparage another classical tradition, regional terminology, guru, lineage, or school.
• Using a vendor listing to make deceptive, false, or unsupported claims about services.

What happens when something breaks these rules

Depending on what happened, we may ask for a correction, decline to publish, remove content, reject a vendor photograph, unpublish a listing, block a sender, or suspend an account. Where a child’s safety is involved we act immediately and report to law enforcement where appropriate.

Telling us

Write to contactus@arangetramregistry.com with the profile, listing, photograph, or message concerned and what troubles you about it.

If you believe a child is in immediate danger, contact your local law enforcement first. Then tell us, so we can act on our side.

A note for parents

If a minor artist is listed here, the platform’s guardian process is designed to keep a parent or guardian involved. A guardian receives a copy of messages that we forward to a minor artist and can ask us to change or remove the profile.

We also want parents to understand the purpose of the registry: it is intended to acknowledge the years of work behind an artistic milestone, not to expose a young person’s private life. If something on a profile feels more public than it should be, tell us.