So Near, Yet So Far: Badal Sircar’s Third Theatre 9780199089581, 0199089582

Table of contents :
Halftitle Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
On Translation, Transliteration, and Use of Some Words
Plate Section
Introduction
1. Bengali Theatre
2. Politics to Performance
3. Untimely Play-Ing with Lights, Sound, Stage, and Action
4. Theatrical Abode to Open Air
5. Voices in Utopia, in Pursuit of Dreams
6. A Theatre of Contradictions
7. Things Fall Apart
Notes
Acknowledgements
On Translation, Transliteration, and Use of Some Words
Introduction
Chapter 1 Bengali Theatre: An Edifice for the Bhadraloks
Chapter 2 Politics to Performance: Sprouting Sircari Theatre
Chapter 3 Untimely Play-Ing with Lights, Sound, Stage, and Action
Chapter 4 Theatrical Abode to Open Air: From Thesis to Antithesis
Chapter 5 Voices in Utopia, in Pursuit of Dreams
Chapter 6 A Theatre of Contradictions
Chapter 7 Things Fall Apart
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

SO NEAR, YET SO FAR

MANUJENDRA KUNDU

SO NEAR, YET SO FAR Badal Sircar’s Third Theatre

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in India by Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, 1 Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110001, India © Oxford University Press 2016 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ePub ISBN-13: 978-0-19-908958-1 ePub ISBN-10: 0-19-908958-2 Typeset in Goudy Oldstyle Std 10.5/13 by Tranistics Data Technologies, New Delhi 110044 Printed in India by Rakmo Press, New Delhi 110020

In memory of my father, Manindra Lal Kundu

CONTENTS Acknowledgements On Translation, Transliteration, and Use of Some Words Plate Section Introduction 1. Bengali Theatre: An Edifice for the Bhadraloks 2. Politics to Performance: Sprouting Sircari Theatre 3. Untimely Play-ing with Lights, Sound, Stage, and Action 4. Theatrical Abode to Open Air: From Thesis to Antithesis 5. Voices in Utopia, in Pursuit of Dreams 6. A Theatre of Contradictions 7. Things Fall Apart Notes and References Bibliography Index About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have taken off at all without Dr Ananda Lal’s active support, precious advices, and words of encouragement. For the last 10 years, he has inspired me to write a comprehensive book on the Third Theatre. Without his generous guidance, this book would not have seen the light of day. His awe-inspiring perfection and meticulousness reflected in constantly driving me to new sources, when I thought them to be superfluous, only to reveal my short-sightedness. I, therefore, take this opportunity to extend my sincere gratitude to my teacher, advisor, and mentor. Dr Biswamoy Pati always extended his support during these strenuous years. His words of encouragement to write this book were exhilarating. He guided me through my distressing time, and without his assistance some of my academic write-ups would not have existed in print. The first part of ‘Bengali Theatre: An Edifice for the Bhadraloks’ was published in the March–April 2010 issue of Social Scientist (vol. 38, nos 3–4, pp. 55–73) as ‘Bengali Theatre: An Edifice on the Ashes of the People’s Culture’. I am indebted to him for allowing me to reproduce it with subsequent changes. I am also indebted to Dr Indrani Sen for the profound academic guidance and motherly care. Mere words and a good command of language are not enough to express the contribution and generosity of Dr Anupam Basu. I requested him to find a number of books, which were not easily available in India. He undertook the pain to collect those indispensable texts from the library of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and scan and email them to me. Without those books, my work would have been incomplete. His intense, passionate recommendations and suggestions shall always be the sources of inspiration. When I began this work, most of Sircar’s plays were unavailable in the market. If Rhitodeep Ghosh, my classmate and now an accomplished performer, did not extend an unswerving assistance in this regard, I could not have ventured into the vast realm of the Third Theatre. I am indebted to him in such a way that no words of gratitude can express. Samik Bandyopadhyay’s incisive observations were of immense help.

Apart from making use of his printed articles, I interviewed him as often as I could. I am profusely indebted to him for those one-on-one sessions. I am obliged to Dr Sudipto Chatterjee for his decisive suggestions and recommendations. Thanks are due to Anjali Basu (nicknamed Manu), Bisakha Ray, Ratna Ghosal, Sandip Saha, Dr Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Dr Abhijit Sen, Dr Pabitra Sarkar, Dr Pratibha Agrawal, Dr Amlan DasGupta, Kamal Saha, Tapan Bannerji, Arijit Roy, Kalyan Ghosh, Sumit Kumar Biswas, Manas Das, Probir Guha, Dulal Kar, Debasish Chakraborty, Dr Smarajit Jana, Putul Singh, Pramila Singh, Geeta Mandal, Geeta Das, Rita Datta, Bharati Dey, and Lokenath Bhattacharya. I am beholden to them for sharing their experience and views at length. Sincere gratitude is extended to the library staff of Jadavpur University, Calcutta (Central Library, School of Cultural Texts and Records, English and Comparative Literature departmental libraries, and Centre for Digital Library and Documentation); Presidency University, Calcutta; Natya Shodh Sansthan, Calcutta; National Library, Calcutta; Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, Calcutta; Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta; Uttarpara Jaykrishna Public Library, Hooghly, West Bengal; Seagull Library, Calcutta, which no longer exists; Kolkata Little Magazine Library and Research Centre; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; National School of Drama, New Delhi; Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi; and Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. My interview with Badal Sircar titled ‘Third Theatre in Bengal: An Interview with Badal Sircar’ appeared in the Sephis e-Magazine on 2 January 2006. I extend my gratitude to Dr Samita Sen for allowing me to reproduce its several portions. Madeeha Gauhar and Ritu Singh gave consent to cite a section of ‘Crossing Frontiers: Shared Concerns in Alternative Theatre’ published in the India International Centre Quarterly (vol. 24, nos 2/3 [Monsoon 1997], pp. 250–8). Madhuchhanda Chatterjee gave me the permission to reproduce a few articles and photographs of the Natya Shodh Sansthan. A former theatre worker, on condition of anonymity, shared some rare photographs with me. Judith Albuquerque of Teamwork Arts shared some information about the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards’s (META) Lifetime Achievement Award conferred on Sircar, and an audiovisual of the award night. Special thanks to all of them. Dr Biman Bandyopadhyay gave me the opportunity to verify the dates of Sircar’s studentship at the Bengal Engineering College (now Indian Institute of

Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal). Dr Jessica Ferm provided me with some information about the history of the Department of Town Planning of the University College London (which is now the School of Planning within the Bartlett Faculty for the Built Environment), where Sircar was a student for two years. I extend my sincere thanks to both Dr Bandyopadhyay and Dr Ferm. I owe a debt of gratitude to the editorial team of the Oxford University Press, and to Premanka Goswami, for the priceless suggestions and presenting this work in the best possible way. I express my heartfelt adoration and respect for Ashok Bhattacharya. My seniors—Aveek Sarkar, Hirak Bandyopadhyay, Rahul Purakayastha—and friends—Anamitra Sengupta, Poulomi Das, Dr Shilpi Rajpal, Suman Roy— are fondly remembered at the end of a long researching journey. When she came to know that I would mention her in the Acknowledgements, Sukanya Ray, my wife, strongly objected to my plan, then implored, after that threatened not to look at my work if I did so. I know that she does not believe in exhibitionism and prefers to lead a life far away from public attention, but how could I conceal the fact that without her, bearing the brunt of my torture, agonies of indifference, and ruthlessness over the years, I would not have been able to complete this book? She did not contribute to it academically, but her presence and silent support are nothing short of direct contribution. Never would I have imagined that a ‘boy’ close to his forties could be scolded for being ‘inattentive’ to his ‘research’ work if Mrs Manju Kundu had not been my mother! It needs a skilled pen to express how I was goaded on by her rebukes, affection, and tenderness. Her widowed loneliness, deep sighs, distressed wrinkles, dishevelled emptiness taught me to stand up again and again, overcome fatigue and failure. Many a time did I falter, stumble, surrender, resign, but it was she who stood beside me, determined and ever optimistic, as if it was her work and she had to fulfil a mission. Indeed, she completed this book with me. It is also her research work. This work belongs to one more person, who could not speak, nor could see. He did not interfere, advise, or criticize. Practically, he had nothing to do with this work, yet he was the only inspiration for setting out on this journey and that too on Bengali theatre. I wanted to be like him knowing fully well that I could never achieve that benchmark: he is—as Michael Madhusudan Datta eulogized Ravan of his Meghanadbadh Kavya—‘a grand Fellow’.1 He

is my father Manindra Lal Kundu. With conviction, determination, erudition, zeal, aspiration–failure, anger–despair, and deprivation, he is now freezeframed. From him I inherited the sullying dynamics of the Partition of Bengal. It is through him that I know the painful history of my grandfather’s escape from East Pakistan to Assam, and eventually to West Bengal, for subsistence, to be cheated, deprived, ruined, and rise up on the ashes of failure time and again. These perhaps were the driving forces behind my father’s uncompromising, robust determination to challenge the call of death and achieve the highest academic honour. His austerity, self-contradictions, shortcomings, relentless lust for knowledge, and a deep sense of nothingness make me a proud son, a diligent student of life, a wealthy inheritor. During these rigorous years of my research, he was not with me physically, but in every word, every line, every page—with their faults and accuracies—he was there. Without his silent presence, I could not have gathered the courage to undertake this work and conclude it. This work is for him. A tribute from an undeserving son to his father.

ON TRANSLATION, TRANSLITERATION, AND USE OF SOME WORDS All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are mine. In my translations, I have tried to be close to the original texts, and while translating interviews, the colloquial flavour has been retained as much as possible. With regard to transliterations, I have followed the conventional, common systems of spelling the Bengali and Sanskrit words, and the words for the classical ragas of Hindustani classical music in the Roman script. Instead of Kolkata, I have preferred to retain Calcutta in this book, because I have dealt with that period mostly, when the city was known by its colonial name in English. To avoid confusion and maintain uniformity, I have retained the name throughout this book. This book carries both ‘prostitute’ and ‘sex worker’ without making any distinction between the two. As ‘some practitioners of the trade are reported to have resented’1 the use of the word ‘sex worker’, because ‘after all (the word) sex is there’,2 I have decided to retain both the words. It is my understanding that the basic work remains the same, no matter how it is expressed. The exploitation continues in one form or the other. This realization intensified more after my interaction with some members of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), Calcutta, which has been working for the rights of the ‘sex workers’.

PLATE SECTION

Comedy in the Time of Crises. Badal Sircar (second from left), (presumably) Malina Ganguly, Putul Sircar, and others in Kabi-kahini. Production: not known, n.d.; direction: Badal Sircar. Source: A former theatre worker.

Wild Horses. (From L to R) Ashok Lokhande, Amol Palekar, Hemu Adhikari, and Chitra Palekar in Pagla Ghora. Production: Sarth, Mumbai, 1990; direction: Amol Palekar. Source: Natya Shodh Sansthan, Kolkata.

Introspection and Retrospection. (From L to R) Anjali Basu, Deben Ganguly, (fourth from left) Rajat Kumar, (sixth from left) Badal Sircar, and Pankaj Munshi in Sesh Nei. The other performers could not be identified. Production: Satabdi, n.d.; direction: Badal

Sircar. Source: A former theatre worker.

A Pair of Sunglasses! Badal Sircar with unidentified persons during his Manipur visit, n.d. Source: A former theatre worker.

Of Rice and Men. Deben Ganguly, Badal Sircar, Sandip Saha, Shanta Datta, Dulal, Baidyanath, and others in Bhoma. Production: Satabdi, n.d.; (official) direction: Badal Sircar. Source: A former theatre worker.

Working in the Shop. Unidentified participants during a workshop; n.d. Source: A former theatre worker.

The Arena. Set model for Spartacus. Source: Natya Shodh Sansthan, Kolkata.

‘Working Men of All Countries, Unite!’ (From L to R) Ashu Mukhopadhyay, Dipankar Datta, Debasish Chakraborty, Tapan Banerjee, Badal Sircar, and others in Sagina Mahato.

Production: Arena Theatre Group, Pathasena, Ritam, Satabdi, n.d.; (official) direction: Badal Sircar. Source: A former theatre worker.

Anganmancha in Action. Badal Sircar with unidentified performers in Bhoma. Production: Satabdi, n.d.; (official) direction: Badal Sircar. Source: Natya Shodh Sansthan, Kolkata.

The Architects. (From L to R) Bisakha Ray, Sandip Saha, Parag Maitra, (on top) Tapas Mukherjee, Partha Sengupta, Kalyan Ghosh, and others at the rehearsal of Shana Baurir Kathakata. Production: Arena Theatre Group, Satabdi, n.d.; (official) direction: Bisakha Ray. Source: A former theatre worker.

INTRODUCTION

Scripting Ideas. Badal Sircar at his residence in Calcutta during the Esperanto teaching session with an unidentified attendee, n.d. Source: A former theatre worker.

Like any other reader of Badal Sircar, I could not escape the overwhelming charm of Ebong Indrajit. I felt that I had reached the threshold of one of the most important chapters in the history of Bengali theatre. A search for other writings began; I came across Theatre-er Bhasha and got converted instantly. That is how my journey into a completely new trajectory of performance discourse started, which eventually took the shape of this book. As I matured with this work, in place of blind fascination, a critical approach to Sircar’s texts and ideas of a new theatre became more important. It turned into a process of examining the development of Third Theatre diachronically, in a historical perspective, taking me all the way back to nineteenth-century Bengal, the period of the birth of modern Bengali drama. With the help of an imported idea, the nineteenth-century Bengali gentry strove to gain social status in the contemporary cultural paradigm. The arrival of one was the reason for another’s crisis: with the rise and prosperity of proscenium theatre, existing popular and folk culture was relegated, and by the turn of the twentieth century, many of its forms were fighting for survival. A revolution in the cultural and thus social spheres took place. In the name of cognition, erudition, and sophistication, the subalterns were ignored and silenced. However, after the inception of the Dramatic Performances Act in 1876, Bengali theatre lost its freedom of expression. Plays written afterwards were chiefly based on historical, mythological, religious, and metaphysical elements, robbed of the explicit idiom of resistance, though master dramatists built protest into them. The absence of reality and the common people’s lives and thoughts is notable in the drama of this period. During the 1940s, the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) unshackled Bengali theatre from such a state of inertia, only to lose its sheen almost within a decade. It was probably the first serious collective enterprise of the Bengali educated class to incorporate ordinary and underprivileged people on the cultural fringe as a weapon of social change, though, eventually, IPTA was incapacitated by the exclusion of the people, who were its primary source of resilience and vigour. ‘Bengali Theatre: An Edifice for the Bhadraloks’ (Chapter One) deals with these issues to represent the state of Bengali theatre before Sircar was initiated—the backdrop to his dramatic career. It must be clarified here that the narrative of the preclusion of nineteenth-century Bengali urban popular

culture drawn in the first part of this chapter is not at all an exhaustive analysis. There are other aspects; I have pursued only a few of them prevalent in Bengal (especially in Calcutta). Though ‘Politics to Performance: Sprouting Sircari Theatre’ (Chapter Two) draws heavily on Sircar’s autobiography in four volumes, and the letters and diaries written by him, it is not exactly a biographical narrative. This chapter rather focuses on the evolution of Sircar from a Communist Party member to a proscenium playwright. He was introduced to party politics as a student, only to be disenchanted soon. Thence, a disillusioned Sircar’s personal, academic, and professional paths took a different turn. With the disengagement from political activities grew an attachment to a new vocation that would eventually tear him away from his native land. Whether this also incited the creative spirit in Sircar cannot be said, but it definitely played an important role in his learning process and conception of many plays. Apart from joining a course in town planning in London, his education as a future theatre thinker was personal and non-academic. At the political level, he was far away from institutionalized politics. Disaffection had made him a ‘non-party Left’.1 A step-by-step discussion of different phases of Sircar’s life was imperative in this chapter to get an idea of the sources and instruments engineered to the making of a political theatre thinker. It is certainly of our interest to observe the dramatic twists and turns, ups and downs of his career that took him away from recording the pain and pathos of the down-and-out. Oddly, there is little evidence of his political adherence in the plays written in the first phase of his career. Most of them are comedies. Only a few reflect the turmoil of contemporary society faintly, leave alone the ideas of communism. The ones that have feeble elements of a strife-ridden West Bengal or India remain tethered mainly to the problems of an individual, which may be construed as bourgeois in nature in spite of their human appeal. When the country was passing through difficult times and the daily survival of the common man was uncertain, Sircar’s plays remained dreadfully silent on these issues. They were synonymous with and reflective of his lifestyle etched in the autobiography. Quite possibly, owing to his international exposure, some of the plays of this period are reflective of the worldwide war atrocities,2 instead of the Indian situation. One wonders why and how a politically committed person can be silent about contemporary social and political disorder and the deplorable conditions of the people in his

native land. Whether he was serious about his political belief is an obvious question that can be raised from this point. However, it is also true that a few of these plays made a name for him in the Bengali and Indian theatre worlds. Initially, Sircar did not seem to want to create any ripples of criticism on that surface of apparent peace and stability. ‘Untimely Play-ing with Lights, Sound, Stage, and Action’ (Chapter Three) analyses this phase. Sircar, indeed, could have enjoyed what the proscenium stage had bestowed on him by that time. However, discontent with what he had been doing, coupled with application of his Left ideology, led him into an uncharted territory of theatre. The lessons of experimental Western theatre (and folk elements of India, as claimed by Sircar, which is subject to intense investigation) helped him conceive of a portable, intimate, and money-less theatre: a theatre of synthesis, which spread in other parts of India through Sircar’s participation and presentation of theatrical activities and workshops. In quest of a change, he travelled into the rural parts of West Bengal with his invented brand of theatre, which remained voluntary, amateur, and limited. The historical development of his Third Theatre was in a true sense a journey from proscenium theatre to the intimate and open-air performances, primarily focused on an urban audience. This chapter titled ‘Theatrical Abode to Open Air: From Thesis to Antithesis’ (Chapter Four) is complemented by a narrative of his workshops in India and abroad, and his voluntary collaboration with the sex workers of Sonagachi, reputedly the largest redlight district in Asia. Contrary to the previous phase, Sircar’s productions demonstrate relatively strong political character in this stage. He wanted to reach out to the people with the aid of theatre; the message was to change. But his objective was impaired by the very idiom of theatre he created, the reasons for which may be found in the chronicle of the making of the Third Theatre. As Brecht’s theatre seemed to Barthes to have diminished the Author,3 we cannot claim the same vis-à-vis Sircar’s theatre discourse.4 His personal life and creativity were intermingled to the extent that the latter was often overlaid with the former. As I have mentioned earlier, in order to understand the transformation of Sircar’s stand and the spectator’s/reader’s reception of his plays (similarly, actors’ understanding with the audience), we have to ‘remove’5 the author from the autobiographies and read them independently, where Sircar’s past would be our sources to ‘disentangle’6 the contradictions and inventions.

‘Voices in Utopia, in Pursuit of Dreams’ (Chapter Five) deals with Sircar’s Third Theatre plays. Most of them are thought-provoking, embracing more than one problem in one breath, sometimes juxtaposing similar or opposite issues. This kind of textual development certainly enriches drama with dynamism, but at some risk of repetitiveness and simplicity. He wants to explain too many problems within the framework of a single play—the economic plight of the poor, the capitalist system which causes this plight, … the militant nature of the world capitalist order, the danger of a nuclear war threatened by this order, etc., etc. While all these dimensions are surely relevant for a political analysis of the situation in India, Badal Sircar somehow fails to bind together these various strands into a pithy theatrical statement. As a result, these plays seem to exist in an amorphous zone—… The dialogues therefore vary from gushing emotional outbursts to didactic political arguments.7

Sircar’s plays as a whole are not devoid of these limitations, though reading them individually is stimulating—so much so that Michhil (Procession; Jaloos in Urdu) ushered in a new era of alternative theatre in Pakistan during General Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime. Madeeha Gauhar, the founder of Ajoka Theatre, tells us a captivating story: It was not a coincidence that the first order instruction given by General Zia to Pakistan Television was about the banning of a classical dance programme, ‘Payal’ by the Kathak dancer Naheed Siddiqui. This was part of the considered policy of the military government to replace dance, music, sculpture and theatre with religious music, calligraphy, Qirat recitation and naat singing contests. The emergence of Ajoka and other such theatre groups was an inevitable response to this attempt to stifle the creativity and silence the voices of the Pakistani people. Ajoka’s first production was Badal Sircar’s Jaloos. A play about the political exploitation and betrayal of the masses by political and religious leaders, written in the context of West Bengal, it appeared to be as relevant to the Pakistan of the early eighties. I had met Badal Sircar in Delhi in 1982 and attended rehearsals of a play of his—Bhoma. This was my first encounter with the ‘Third Theatre’. This experience gave me an insight into the work being done in India and proved to be a major inspiration to set up a similar group in Pakistan. I brought back with me to Lahore a Hindi translation of Jaloos and when Ajoka started looking for its first script, Jaloos was the obvious choice. It was not easy to find a cast, a venue, and of course an audience for such a subversive piece of theatre. We had to settle for my mother’s house lawn as no theatre hall, government owned or private, was available because of stringent censorship laws. Performing in an open space was also not possible as the city was mostly in the grip of section 144, which banned congregations of more than four people. The performance could

not be advertised, hence we had to depend on word-of-mouth publicity. We got a sizeable but more importantly an enthusiastic audience. As soon as the agencies got wind of this private activity, they appeared on the scene and started questioning the visitors and noting down the registration numbers of their vehicles. But the barrier had been broken. The audience had got a taste of subversive, meaningful but entertaining theatre and the actors had realised that doing theatre without a stage, set, lights, costumes, sound system, props and most importantly the censorship certificate was possible. That was the beginning of the alternative theatre movement in Pakistan. The fact that the first Ajoka script was an Urdu adaptation of an Indian play was no coincidence. It was obvious for us to look East for inspiration. India had a vast and vibrant theatre movement and the issues confronting Indian playrights [sic] and directors were very similar to ours. The similarities of history, language, culture, socio-economic problems and the world-view, and most importantly the common heritage of theatre and other performing arts, made it much easier for us to adapt and produce Indian scripts. Selecting a script by a radical left-wing Indian playwright, motivated by a desire to cross the frontiers, could have led to serious charges of sedition and anti-Islamic activities. There were some left-wing journalists facing such charges for similar activities. But for some reason, the military regime did not overreact, perhaps we were not considered a major threat at a time when the regime was busy crushing the political opposition which by now had resurfaced. Ajoka continued theatre with a radical social and political content. Its work was a blend of modern and folk forms. Its most frequent themes were human rights, women’s struggle for emancipation, persecution of religious minorities, exploitation of workers and projection of the values of humanism, secularism and social justice. Ajoka thus became a part of the democratic movement. At the same time the bonds established with the production of Jaloos were strengthened. This was inevitable because there wasn’t much theatre activity within Pakistan and one had to look around for inspiration. Although Pakistan had been exposed to theatre movements in the West, the South Asian experience was more relevant and beneficial, for obvious reasons.8

While political upheaval prompted Gauhar to adopt Michhil in Lahore, in a relatively amicable situation in Montreal, Canada, Teesri Duniya Theatre (literally, Third World Theatre) started its journey with the Hindi version of the same play in 1981.9 In Nepal, during the turbulent period from 1980 to 1990, Asesh Malla (the founder of Sarwanam Theatre) felt the urgency to take theatre, which had been patronized by the royal family10 and ‘served only those in power as exemplified by the Royal Nepal Academy’,11 to the poorest of poor and the ‘illiterate’ mass.12 Malla did not have any specific model to draw on,13 though, later, he ‘educated himself to the work of Indian

artists including Badal Sircar’. In 1983, Malla participated in workshops led by the progenitor of the Third Theatre.14 However, most of the plays of this period would entice the reader/spectator into a kind of Sircari utopia, where (the problems of) capitalism would be vanished as if by magic. However, in his enterprise for establishing the Third Theatre as a form with transformative potential, Sircar wrote a few books and lectures published as doctrinal booklets. In Chapter Six, ‘A Theatre of Contradictions’, I have analysed his texts and those of Western practitioners, whose work he had seen, side by side, in order to show his specific debts. On the other hand, his assertion of indigenous folk influence on the Third Theatre cannot go uncontested. Its history reveals that Sircar was primarily swayed by Western dramaturgy and whatever Indian folk element is there is of little importance. In the course of analysis, we find that his ideas of ‘directness’ and ‘closeness’ are very limited and sometimes starkly contradictory. It is also observed that the Third Theatre is not at all free from monetary transactions. The problems with the Third Theatre and Sircar’s way of functioning cannot go unnoticed. The reasons for the present decline of Sircar’s own group, Satabdi, and other groups following the principles of the Third Theatre, are attestations to this statement. The departure of old patrons, the absence of new ones, the lack of interest among the new generation, the shortcomings in the basic principles and actor–director relationships, and the lack of innovation and contemporaneity explain why ‘Things Fall Apart’ (Chapter Seven). Sircar’s detachment from his old comrades-in-arms, who set out with him in the early 1970s, turned the progress into a prosaic practice. This chapter deals with Satabdi’s group dynamics, or lack thereof, and reveals an emotional history of pain and disillusionment. ‘[I]f we are to evaluate Badal Sircar’s experiments over the last four decades, we shall have to estimate what he has added to the Indian dramatic scene, as well as how he has explained his purpose through these experiments. There is a need for … wide-ranging inquiries that should go beyond the immediate popularity or relevance of his plays.’15 In the light of this pithy and incisive comment by Sumanta Banerjee, I would like to mention that this book is primarily concerned with and lays stress on Sircar’s proscenium and the Third Theatre plays available in print, though there are occasions when some script-less, unprinted texts are considered for discussion, and Sircar’s workshop processes and Satabdi’s

performances have been explored, too. In my analyses of more than 50 plays, the texts have been studied chronologically in order to map the historical progress from the proscenium to the Third Theatre and beyond, but equal importance (and the same style of review/evaluation) could not be devoted to all of them considering their content and constitution. Though made in a different context, Sircar’s statement has to be remembered in this regard, which says that all plays, adapted by him, do not necessarily carry ‘equal value’.16 In Chapter One, some important stages of the evolution of Bengali theatre during the colonial period have been studied focusing on its elitist constitution, which also come up in the subsequent chapters. A discussion of those stages of Bengali theatre was even more important because in his theoretical writings, Sircar tried to differentiate among folk theatre, Western theatre (imported during the colonial period and eventually took the form of city theatre), and the Third Theatre.17 To show the elitist, urban nature of his form of theatre practice that continued to be pursued from the colonial period, albeit in different formats, a discussion of that period was imperative. I did not intend to write another history of Bengali Theatre in this chapter. It was important to pay attention to those incidents and phases which might justify the title of the chapter and fulfil my objective. Similarly, when I entered the Sircar period from Chapter Two onwards, for obvious reasons, I had to concentrate on his theatrical journey towards the making of the Third Theatre. Urban elitism was still prevalent in other theatre groups’ practices, of course, in modified shape. Being well aware of their style of performances, Sircar had already rejected them, and there was virtually no alternative theatre in West Bengal before the advent of the Third Theatre. Considering all these factors, and as the book is primarily on Sircar’s Third Theatre, I have preferred to concentrate on that and dispensed with the analyses of other group-theatre activities. As I explored the Third Theatre plays, the idea of investigating possible links between text and performance, text to performance and vice versa, relationship between audience–actor–text, space–performance–gaze in a historical perspective—all of which require a deeper personal experience of rehearsal process and performance activities—occurred to me many a time. When I started to look into those aspects of theatre practice, I realized that,

like many other theatre groups of Calcutta, Satabdi also did not preserve its performance history, neither in writing nor in audiovisual form. Kalyan Ghosh, one of Satabdi’s senior members associated with the group for nearly 30 years, clearly said that they had not preserved any such documents or visual footage. I know that there are some visual files in the archives of Natya Shodh Sansthan; I recorded two performances by Satabdi; some video recordings can be found in the custody of Doordarshan Kendra and other archives and individual followers of the Third Theatre. While most of them are common, those resources will fall short of drawing a narrative of the historical transformation of the Third Theatre vis-à-vis text–performance– audience relationship. To get an idea of and do justice to the evolution of the conversation between them, I think the writer must have essentially a firsthand, direct experience of the performances over a prolonged period. Because ‘Badal’s work suggests that the physical work of the body, experienced through participation and through witnessing, engages us more fully and directly, at an instinctive gut level. As such it is the means to holistic mindspirit-body experience of theatre.… The language of gesture, image, rhythm, movement and montage are immediate and are read instinctively.’18 Unfortunately, I was not blessed with that kind of experience. A theatrical performance is a live action that cannot be resurrected at a future date. Every performance is different from the previous one. Rustom Bharucha tried to provide us with his personal experience of the performances, but his descriptions do not throw much light in this regard. I would like to cite two examples: We don’t think about techniques. We think about what we have to communicate and what is the best way of communicating what we have to say.19 Though this response is somewhat disingenuous … one cannot deny that the power of Sircar’s theatre lies in the direct conveyance of its message.20 [With regard to Bhoma] no one can deny that Sircar’s actors require a great deal of skill in order to project the suffering of an oppressed people with such intensity. But the skill is not displayed; the technique of the actors remains invisible. What matters is the direct communication of the subject between the spectators and the actors—a communication so immediate and simple in its mode of transmission that it almost makes one question its reliance on any form of technique.21

In both instances, Bharucha’s emphasis on ‘direct’ness remain ambiguous. While in the first example he criticizes Sircar’s statement as ‘disingenuous’,

in the second example, he has to say: ‘the technique of the actors remains invisible’; ‘makes one question its reliance on any form of technique’. What was this directness then? Elsewhere in this book he mentioned how the actors used to see into the eyes of the audience during the performances,22 which is not enough to portray the vocabulary of directness because ‘gaze’ is only a limited way to establish communication. How did the body of the actor communicate with that of a spectator? How did the spectator react? What were his/her feelings? What was the importance of linguistic words and dialogue throwing in establishing this kind of directness? Many such questions arise, but only a vacuum persists, only to be rescued by the alleviating word ‘direct’. I do not view this kind of description (as was done by Bharucha) as shortcoming because I think non-translatability of performances, among other reasons, is deterrent to the analytical representation in writing in such circumstances. Besides, the character of the audience also keeps changing with time and place. ‘Through the play our protagonist changed a little, we changed a little, and we hoped that our spectators, some of them, changed a little. The sum total of all these little, almost imperceptible changes, all these little positive choices we take, can one day bring about the change we are all waiting for.’23 How these changes took place and what was the nature of change that Sircar had meant are difficult to identify vis-à-vis Third Theatre’s performance analysis, though the ideological perspective is quite clear. Elsewhere he said: ‘The essential tool of the trade is the human body. The potentiality of the human body, the ability to throw one’s voice so that 4000 people can be reached without the aid of a mike, must be explored.’24 Without a direct, hands-on actor-training experience, the realization of such a statement is absolutely impossible. In one of the interviews,25 Samik Bandyopadhyay discussed very briefly how the use of the body in Satabdi’s performances kept changing and their experimental stagnation with the performing body, etc. But, regrettably, those broken pieces of information were not enough to construct the processes of transformation. In my other interviews, some members of Satabdi of the 1970s also alluded to these issues briefly. I could have pressed ahead with my interrogation to elicit more fractured pieces of information from all of them, which would have been a mechanical exercise of disjointed data collection—accumulation of secondary sources—with no clear view of mine, let alone personal experience of the performances. In the absence of primary sources, that is, as a writer,

my direct exposure to the changing aspects of performances, a history of performances could not be written. A forceful discovery might have led to several loopholes. The history would have been not only incomplete, but also impaired. On the other hand, I verbally requested Satabdi to allow me to see their rehearsals, but, unfortunately, my plea was rejected, as it was against the rule of the group. I even wanted to see their workshops organized occasionally for external participants, but then also I was told to be an active participant. As I could not do so (for several personal reasons), the door remained closed to me. I cannot hold them responsible for these incidents because it was a matter of their ethics and rules. Similarly, the scarcity of information on the reception of Sircar’s proscenium and Third Theatre plays in the performances of other theatre groups of West Bengal and other states in India, as also abroad, creates another level of problems. The same is applicable to Satabdi’s workshops as well. Except for Bohurupee, whose accounts have been incorporated in this book, no theatre groups have maintained a systematic record of their performances of Sircar’s plays. Whatever was found had been incorporated with due diligence. In Voyages in the Theatre, Sircar has recounted the performances and workshops of a few plays with cautionary remarks that it was not possible for him to give an account of them beyond a point.26 He was completely aware of the obscure and academic nature of his descriptions and accepted own limitations.27 In such circumstances, invoking performance analysis and its corresponding theories to (re)construct the historical metamorphoses for a deeper understanding of the nuances of performance was impossible and would have been an act of insubstantiality. It is rather important to look at other avenues that might lead us to the influence of ‘ideological’ performance of the Third Theatre, as perceived by Ananya Chatterjea: In fact, while my earlier choreographic work was still continuously focused on political themes, my work with ADT28 since 2005 has been focused on an examination of process, partnership-building, and year-round programming in order to implement an examined and thought-through model of social justice. However, there have been difficult negotiations along the way. The impact of the work of cultural activists, like Kolkata-based playwright and director Badal Sircar or the Mumbai-based Stree Mukti Shanghatana (Women’s Liberation Organization) Cultural Troupe, have assured us about the constancy of change that trickles through when we do our work.29

Therefore, this book is primarily concerned with the performances of words, in other words, linguistic performances towards the Third Theatre. Translation studies have a completely different trajectory. I know a lady who did her MPhil in the English translations of Sircar’s plays. His plays were translated into other Indian languages as well. Their reception in those languages and the dialogue they establish with performance spaces would lead us to a completely different research project altogether, though translatability or the acceptance of translated plays did not seem to be a problem to some Bengali30 and non-Bengali31 spectators. The reception of Sircar’s plays in cinema, which has been touched upon by the playwright in the final volume of his autobiography, has not been mentioned/discussed in this book for the same, simple reason that film studies would lead us to the labyrinth of different academic understandings. Shweta Kishore’s observation is useful in this regard. While stating that the ‘Indian documentary film culture exists in a field with other political art forms and within the larger field of global documentary practice’,32 she has mentioned Sircar among others as the representatives of ‘other political art forms’. Though she does not say more about this, for the present discussion it would suffice to say that the trajectory of (documentary) films, in spite of being placed side by side in a homogenous group, creates a completely different vocabulary, which should be addressed separately. P. Kerim Friedman has given an interesting analysis of Dakxin Bajrange Chhara’s second film Bulldozer, which is, according to him, close to the tradition of street theatre, and where scenes of Sircar’s Bhoma were actually used in order to intensify the film’s content: While the film’s message is powerful and direct, the narrative structure of the film is not. Indeed the complex interweaving of street theater, interviews, voice-overs, and vérité footage is likely to confuse viewers unfamiliar with the events discussed in the film. Such confusion is understandable, as the film is in many ways closer to the street-theater tradition in which Bajrange first made his name than to that of traditional documentary filmmaking. The film shares with street theater both its exaggerated dramatic style and a sense of immediacy. Indeed, throughout the film we see scenes from two street-side performances by Budhan Theater: the first from their adaptation of the Badal Sircar play Bhoma [1983], and the second from their original play Mujhe mat maro … Sahab (‘Please don’t beat me … Sir’). This play is a medley of scenes from all of Budhan Theatre’s plays, including the play Bulldozer from which the film gets its title: its haunting, dirge-like song

runs as a refrain throughout the film.33

Here, what needs our special attention is not the issue of thematic closeness (or detachment) of Bulldozer and Bhoma only, but also other formal aspects such as their structural resemblance and (imagery of) the play within the narrative structure of the film, etc. However, though celluloid representation and adaptations have been dispensed with, the photographs are incorporated, with an exception, to give the impression of the different stages of Sircar’s experimentation leading to the Third Theatre, with no special emphasis on any text/play(s). Except for its excellent photographic message, the visual before the Introduction is in no way related to the arguments of this book. I have tried to mention the names of all the performers in each photograph, but, unfortunately, sometimes, a few of them could not be identified; sometimes I had to be ‘satisfied’ with partial identity (where surnames could not be mentioned). Regrettably, for lack of proper archiving, in most of the cases, the venues and dates could not be ascertained either. With regard to the question of direction of the Third Theatre plays, going by the official status, Sircar has been mentioned as their director in the photographs, though I refuse to disregard the contributions of each member of Satabdi or any other group. That is why, the word ‘Official’ has been mentioned within the brackets before the word ‘Direction’ in the appropriate captions of the photographs. A comprehensive work on the Third Theatre in Bengali and English was long overdue, but that did not come to fruition. Most of the works on the Third Theatre and Sircar are non-academic in nature; even the academic articles revolve around almost the same thematic structure; interviews are mostly limited to the making of Sircar as a playwright. Neither Sircar nor the other members of Satabdi discussed other aspects than these incidents/issues. In terms of availability of both primary and secondary resources, the completion of this book was not an easy task; most readers do not know that many of Sircar’s plays have never been printed. When I started off, most of his plays were out of print and only available to a few members of Satabdi. I am greatly indebted to Rhitodeep Ghosh, a former member of Satabdi, and my classmate in Presidency College, Calcutta (now Presidency University), for providing me with many unavailable (and unpublished) texts then, in 2004.

To avoid complication, I decided to forgo a few unpublished plays that I had collected.34 Similarly, non-academic commentaries on Sircar and the Third Theatre are scattered here and there in Bengali periodicals and journals, many of which are impossible to locate now. It was therefore comparatively difficult to reconstruct an authentic history of Sircar’s drama and the Third Theatre. In the absence of any serious, let alone exhaustive, previous undertakings in this field, I had to depend on Sircar’s accounts on different occasions, without being able to verify their authenticity or embellish them with supplementary information from other sources. But whenever I came across with factual discrepancies, I have mentioned them relevantly. I admit the shortcomings of such an investigation and leave further responsibility to posterity, in the unlikely event that it can unearth crucial new literary sources. The aim of this work is not just to record an authentic history of the formation of the Third Theatre. The point of the people’s participation in the performing area, right from nineteenth-century Bengal to the development of the Third Theatre, has returned as a refrain in every chapter. In the history of modern Bengali theatre, which was nurtured and nourished by the educated, influential gentry for nearly two centuries, the presence of the common people themselves remained either feeble or completely absent. Although Sircar left the proscenium arch in pursuit of a demotic, intimate space, his procedure and style of action also eventually left the people out of the Third Theatre’s ambit. It can even be argued that the Third Theatre could not advance much in that direction, and a small, converted, urban elite became its comfortable audience. In this book, the people’s/popular culture has been used to connote primarily the (cultural practice of) socially, economically, and academically fringe lok (literally, person/s or people) as an expression of inverted allegory, though the ‘people’ like me, belonging to the opportunist class, have sometimes managed to insinuate into this classification. As I have mentioned that in the making of Bengali theatre the common people’s participation had been overlooked with occasional consideration, both as performers and textual subjects, the pride of English education that contributed to the high and elitist standard of theatre production in colonial Bengal neither changed much nor evolved afterwards. That is why, people, popular, folk, and lok do not attract the same kind of respect/attention as the educated, elite, and (the

colonial construction of) ‘bhadralok’ (literally, bhadra meaning polite or civil and/or elite; and lok meaning people, self-styled, of course) do. There is a constant divide between the educated and the uneducated, common and uncommon; indiscriminate use of these words is confusing, misleading, and obfuscates the politics behind it. Critics may argue, but the Bengali literary remnants cannot claim to uphold formidably the respect and recognition that this class deserved. Kathryn Hansen has defined aptly ‘popular’ and ‘people’ in practical terms: The designation ‘popular theatre,’ however, introduces a new set of ambiguities. Its possible meanings include ‘well liked’ and ‘of the people,’ as opposed to an established power or government. In the second sense, ‘“popular theatre” is applied to cultural/educational activities in which the popular classes present and critique their own understanding of the world in relation to a broader aim of structural transformation.’ People’s theatre or popular theatre in this sense is usually aligned with progressive political parties or third-world development programs. In the former usage, ‘popular’ may refer to any commercially successful endeavor, often in an urban industrialized context, and has a more pejorative connotation. In addition, popular theatre may be construed as a practice within ‘popular culture,’ meaning the culture of everyday life unbounded by class or social group.35

But her descriptions of the people or popular do not incorporate the class of people I have mentioned above. There is still plenty of scope for understanding the notion of education and knowledge, divide between the educated and uneducated, the ‘speak’-ability and consciousness of the subaltern class, etc., which require further independent, full-length, intense discussions, though it has been dissected already by prominent scholars. I have only touched upon these issues in this work. The theoretical foundation of this book is laid on this idea, encouraging reproduction of some long remarks—some of them being very common—with the aim of and the stand for emphasizing the necessity to revisit the well-trodden areas of academic scholarship. In fact, the title of this book suggests, though tacitly, that Sircar’s Third Theatre went so ‘Near’, yet remained ‘Far’ from the people. But this book does not attempt to depict a history from below. Instead, it is, in a much broader sense, also an emotional history of the intellectual encroachment and the exclusion of the people with no intention to theorize the basic premise of my argument: I make use of the most conventional methods: demonstration or, at any rate, proof in

historical matters, textual references, citation of authorities, drawing connections between texts and facts, suggesting schemes of intelligibility, offering different types of explanation. There is nothing original in what I do.36 I am an experimenter and not a theorist. I call a theorist someone who constructs a general system, either deductive or analytical, and applies it to different fields in a uniform way. That isn’t my case. I am an experimenter in the sense that I write in order to change myself….37

One BENGALI THEATRE AN EDIFICE FOR THE BHADRALOKS

Permit to Babu-dome. Entry ticket for the play Kamale Kamini, n.d. Source: Natya Shodh Sansthan, Calcutta.

… We do not hunt death’s home, where the crops are springing; we are out singing songs of love and thirst, like the village clowns; whom the crop—whom paddy’s fruit at their heart owns, these have snubbed empires, neglected all the Earth’s thrones— these our village clowns— today with crown princes and kings their bones mix bones in dark beneath the earth deep underground; they have not groaned their time away on a tide of sighs and tears; they are not prone, as priests are, to Earth’s fears; their hearts are not torn, as are lovers’ hearts in rhymes made up to the names of the town’s sweethearts; with a farmer’s brow sweat-hot they have not tired out their day—they have not; with an emperor’s brow their brows are part and parcel deep below on this dark night now; by warriors—victors—conquerors—right by such five-foot places of rest, triumphant in gaping laughter their skulls last. Many nights since they came and went—to dark their day has Gone, these rustic poets, village clowns, each one— will they return in the dark night again?1

The history of Bengali theatre is primarily a history of the proscenium stage, the absence of the Body and the presence of the intangible Mind. Bengali theatre has tottered time and again not only for want of quality texts2 and favourable social conditions, but also for its addiction to a fixed idea—with occasional exceptions—of public performances which revolved around the proscenium stage, and a vague mind unable to establish a direct communication between the spectator (or reality) and the reproduced, madeup, make-believe reality of the stage. Having seen the customs of the colonizers and considering them ‘progressive’ in character, the colonized mind immediately took to the ritual of ‘staging’ and the succeeding procedures. To the average educated urban Bengali, the proscenium stage became a fixed object of obsession around which their thoughts of

performance evolved. That was why dramatic performance and proscenium staging became almost habitual and synonymous, at first, in the amateur or private theatres and, subsequently, the public theatres of nineteenth-century Calcutta. It was one of the many practices that the Bengali inherited from the British and painfully struggled to improve on. Leaving aside productions by the English, only the rich and the influential Bengali could organize and enjoy such costly theatrical events during the early colonial period. Most of them were either zamindars, or rajas, or servants of high rank in the British employ. When commercial public theatre was first established in Calcutta in 1872, the common people were allowed to enter by buying tickets. Even though the ticketing system was as old as the first proscenium production in Bengali (1795), it was commercial public theatre which opened its door to the previously debarred sections. Nevertheless, those who could not afford it still remained outside its gamut because the socio-economic conditions as a whole could never support such a bourgeois medium of entertainment. This is one of the important reasons why a small minority of contemporary theatre exponents in Calcutta still shies away from experimenting with proscenium theatre. Instead, a very strong tradition of folk culture was at hand, though it could not draw the attention of the establishment. Ironically, it is now appropriated to suit ‘our’ tastes whenever necessary,3 but historically, folk traditions have always been of little importance to urban Bengali theatre practices, which privileged the preferences of the upper and middle classes. Irrespective of such circumstances, it is noteworthy that the influence of Western theatre forced the early native entrepreneurs of theatre to explore the classical Sanskrit literary texts,4 symbolizing the monarchical and Brahmanical hierarchy, for their source material. But contrary to common belief, neither the principles of Sanskrit plays nor the popular cultural practices had much influence on the formation and development of modern Bengali theatre. It was rather a direct result of the British educational system and the new elements of the proscenium stage, which later even penetrated the inner structure of native genres like Jatra and destroyed their identity.5 As a matter of fact, the socio-cultural languages of the poor and common people had no place in the coterie of an opportunist class born out of colonial governance. In other words, the history of urban Bengali theatre is a history of exclusion (of a large section of the people) and disdain (for the indigenous popular culture) by the aristocracy and the impressionable bourgeois citizenry. We

need to examine the history of this kind of divide in terms of theatrical forms because it underpins Badal Sircar’s theories of the Third Theatre. In August 1826, an editorial essay came out in The Asiatic Journal, which in the following words upheld the necessity for a Bengali theatre in British style: In this extensive city public institutions of various kinds and novel descriptions have lately sprung up for the improvement and gratification of its inhabitants; but their amusement has not yet been consulted, and they have not, like the English community, any place of public entertainment. In former times, actors and actresses were attached to the courts of the princes of India, who represented plays, and charmed the audience with graceful poetry and music, and impassioned action…. It is therefore very desirable, that men of wealth and rank should associate and establish a theatre on the principle of shares, as the English gentlemen have done, and retaining qualified persons on fixed salaries, exhibit a new performance of song and poetry once a month, comfortably to the written nataks or plays, and under the authority of a manager; such a plan will promote the pleasure of all classes of society.6

After a gap of 41 years, Nabaprabandha, a periodical, wrote the following under the title of ‘Natakabhinay’: ‘We request the managers that they build one theatre together, keep salaried actors and actresses and sell tickets which can be used to meet the expenses of acting, and the surplus amount can help improve the quality of acting. Moreover, in anticipation of money, the performers will also be able to entertain the audience by diligently acquired acting-skill.’7 These two editorial pieces were concerned for ‘all classes of society’ and the ‘quality of acting’ on conditions of ‘shares’, fixed ‘salaries’, and a particular ‘place of public entertainment’, but of course on the basis of a competitive market—all of which were considered noble, whereas Jatrawallas (the people associated with Jatra) were considered as ignoble tradesmen and filthy elements of society, even by someone of the stature of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay.8 Taracharan Sikdar, one of the earliest Bengali playwrights, wrote this in the introductory chapter of his Bhadrarjun (1852): This book is written in a new style. Therefore, some details should be discussed here briefly. This play, with regard to the development of action and placement of scenes, is similar to the European plays. I did not follow the course—prescribed in the Sanskrit dramaturgy—of some playwrights, such as, nandi, introduction of sutradhar and nati,

prologue by them, and vidushaka, etc. Apart from these features, Sanskrit plays are almost similar to the European plays. Sanskrit plays are divided into anka which is called act in English, but in Sanskrit plays the ankas are not divided into scenes.… Having framed it in the order of European plays I present this play.9

In keeping with the trend of society, Taracharan merely took a story from the Bengali version of the Mahabharata by Kasiram Das as the source material, but his principal concern was to get closer to ‘European’ dramatics. The adulation and hunger for the European (English) style and contempt for the prevalent native popular culture had gone so far that the anonymous writer of Sambandha-Samadhi Natak (1867) dared to express his distaste for Vedic (Brahmanical) rituals.10 Admittedly, the Bengali plays of this period also bore some feeble elements and styles of Vaishnava Padavali (poems on Lord Krishna and Radha), Gauriya Vaishnavism (the cult of Krishna worship in Bengal), Mangal Kavya (long poems on local gods), Panchali (a class of poems, usually sung in devotion, celebrating the glory of a deity), the Ramayana (by Krittibas Ojha), the Mahabharata (by Kasiram Das), Kavigan or Kabigan (poetic recitals), and Jatra. But the reasons for using such elements were never to glorify the cultural heritage, nor to be independent by the right of what was handed down for centuries; many of these elements became unavoidable because of their widespread popularity in the ‘lower’ strata of society. For example, Sukumar Sen thinks that the usage of songs (though not their essence) in Bengali drama was a direct result of the same in the old Jatra.11 Girishchandra Ghosh, playwright, theatre director, and theatre actor, according to critics like Himani Bannerji and Utpal Dutt, was the torchbearer of this style of popular performance in proscenium theatre.12 But such compulsions (usage of songs) and exceptions (Girishchandra Ghosh) do not necessarily justify the influence of local characteristics on an alien idea of performance discourse. Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay (Banerjee), an eminent historian of the Bengali stage, states, ‘Old Jatra has no connection with the Bengali drama….13 As a matter of fact, the Bengali drama did not grow out of the Bengali yatra, nor did the demand for a new kind of theatre come from the class which, as a rule, patronized yatras.’14 These comments precisely indicate, ‘The origin of the Bengali stage is to be sought in the desire for newer and less archaic amusements felt by a generation, which had received a good English education. The more well-to-do among them went to

the English play-houses of Calcutta.’15 Marx offered incisive observations on the formation of the educated class of Calcutta. To his understanding, in 1853, the British rule was composed of binary historical aspects: ‘one destructive, the other regenerating.’16 The Occident was imported while the mission of annihilating the old Asiatic society was achieved gradually and simultaneously by England.17 In doing so, the political unity of the country was strengthened and perpetuated by the introduction of electric telegraph, defence mechanisms bolstered by the native army, a relatively free press ‘introduced for the first time into Asiatic society, and managed principally by the common offspring of Hindus and Europeans, is a new and powerful agent of reconstruction’,18 the inception of private property in land, limited access to Western education system, and the railways and steam transport.19 These were some of the necessary preconditions for the creation of an Indian bourgeoisie coming out of an education system that principally served the purposes of the colonizers. Marx rightly pointed out, ‘From the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly educated at Calcutta, under English superintendence, a fresh class is springing up, endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with European science’.20 This was not typical of only Calcutta. In a slightly different context, Marx and Engels discussed in the Manifesto of the Communist Party how the concept of world literature is connected with the bourgeois mode of production in general. If the precondition for the creation of an educated class in Calcutta is collated with the conditions for penetration of the bourgeoisie in any land, their observation nicely fits in this analysis, and we can have a better understanding of why a generation born of an educated class of patrons and playwrights of private and public theatres in Calcutta ingeniously adopted singing and dancing habits of the ‘inferior’ performances in order to gain popularity and not to lose audiences,21 but, at heart, fell prostrate in worship of the English plays. One prominent reason for such subjection was hidden in the ideas that European, especially English, plays (and those written in imitation) would improve the social standards and help to get rid of ‘backward’ forms like Jatra,22 Kabigan, Panchali, Tarja, Half-Akhrai, etc. The old traditions were very influential in the early nineteenth century. The Bengali were content with Jatra, Panchali, Kabi, Half-Akhrai, and had not started realizing the absence of new European styles of amusement. By the advent of the English education system they

felt the shortcomings.… Those who were familiar with English poetry and drama despised typical forms of recreation like Jatra….23

The proclivity of the establishment is recorded in an essay in BibidharthaSangraha, in which the editor, Rajendralal Mitra, has written: It is hard to describe within one’s civility how abominable Kheur and Kabi were; doubtless, the mind of a sympathetic person is filled with sorrow considering their state of minds who are amused by these…. It can be easily perceived that indecent amusements like Kabi and Kheur would not be appreciated in a civil [bhadra] society for long.… In many places of Calcutta true plays are being enacted for the past four years.… May such entertainments spread in this country— attraction [towards them] be felt in the villages, Jatra, Kabi, Kheur, etc., be cast away by their introduction, eradication of immorality, and immaculate behaviour be established [by them]—these are desirous to us and for that we earnestly place our requests to the wellwishers of the country.24

As a result of such theatrical selectiveness and relentless publicity, not only were the indigenous qualities flushed out, but in some cases they were transformed by the influence of new theatre/drama.25 One such example of transformation was Gitabhinay,26 a genre similar to opera. Though Sukumar Sen27 and many other critics28 emphasized this form as natun (new) Jatra, the following passages would help us understand that this new type of public performance was received in a different light altogether, and as anything but Jatra. Gitabhinay, a middle-of-the-road form of popular culture, was immediately accepted after its inception as a sign of relief from the ‘degenerate Jatra’. On 22 May 1865, The Hindoo Patriot wrote: We acknowledged in our last issue the receipt of SAKONTOLLAH by Baboo Unodapersad Banerjee. This is the first Opera in Bangalee. It has been written in a simple and elegant style, and the interest is well sustained throughout. The songs are appropriate and exquisite. We had the pleasure of witnessing the performance more than once, and we must say that it did credit to those who were engaged in it. We hope the Opera will supersede the degenerate JATRA.29

The Sambad Prabhakar (16 November 1865) reported, ‘The present Jatra performances are detestable to the true music lovers. Considering stage performances are very expensive, a few educated young boys have started presenting Gitabhinay in the same system [as Jatra]. This is very commendable indeed.’30

In the guise of literary criticism, cultural politicization and validation of an alien practice were permeating different social strata. To ensure the stability and permanence of a colonial culture, it was always the best policy to attack and criticize the ‘other’ system with a tone of sympathy in order to (i) project the very act of criticism as a caring and humane undertaking to educate the ‘illiterate’ and ‘uncivilized’ subjects, (ii) benefit not just the writer/critic, but the whole community; here, the writer/critic assumes the role of the saviour/protector and his/her criticism becomes a moral duty, and (iii) suppress the vested interests of the class to which the writer belongs. It is no wonder, then, that on account of alleged poor standards of performance, Jatra, Kabigan, and Panchali31 had been subjected to severe criticism by the Bengali intellectuals and newspapers. If they had problems with the standards of performance and the content of the popular cultural discourses, the critics might have advised to look back at past productions or even contemporary ones, which were not as ‘corrupt’.32 Instead, contemporary Jatras were compared with Western plays. More than anything else, the critics of contemporary Jatra were concerned with an imported idea of purity of their society. The overemphasized body and its freedom in indigenous culture became objectionable to them. The texts giving importance to carnal pleasure were rejected. The quality of events was judged by the social standards of the performers. In most of the cases, they were performed by prostitutes or actors from the ‘lower classes’, which were considered to be abusive to Bengali pride. Nabaprabandha observed: It is unfortunate that some people and a few boys who are inexperienced in acting have turned it [acting on stage and Gitabhinay] into an even more pathetic event than the professional Jatra. Like the abominable puppeteers they are bringing corruption into the pure pleasure of theatre by setting stages in the residences of different people and gulping down luchi, manda [sweets], and wine.33

Social discriminations and professional hatred publicized in this statement correspond to the editorial policies of other dailies of the time. In a letter to Maddhyastha (7 December 1872), an anonymous correspondent wrote on a performance in a tone of lamentation and sarcasm, ‘We were not deprived of dance, fun, and jest of the Bhistis, lest we forget the old Bhisti, Kalua-Bhulua of old Jatra, or their names become obsolete’.34 Amrita Bazar Patrika (12 March 1874) published an article titled ‘Bangalir Bhinna Bhinna Jati’:

The description of Badias is very exciting. There are a few groups of the gypsies like Badia, Nat, Bajikar, Kol, etc., who are closely related to the gypsies of Europe. Their language, customs, policies are much the same. They detest industry. They are neither Hindu nor Muslim. Kans are also the same. They say that they are Kinnars [a class of demi-gods, expert in music and dance] but they trade on music. They are also neither Hindus nor Muslims. Kans, especially, have a custom, which is new to Bengal. Their women come out in the open very easily; not only that, they are not ashamed to dance and sing. On the other hand, they also bury the dead like the Badias. The behaviour of the Jugis is even more unique. They are spread over all of Bengal. They have different types of businesses. Most of them work as weavers and garment traders but many are also associated with Kabiraji [the profession of an Ayurvedic physician], Tikadari [a vaccinator], and the trading of Jatra.35

The writer not only made caustic remarks against the people belonging to the groups like Badia (Bedia), Nat, Bajikar, Kol, Kan, and Kinnar, but has also tried to disassociate them from the whole society by saying that they were neither Hindus nor Muslims. Without undertaking to dig into their anthropological details, the writer very tacitly made them rootless, unidentifiable social degenerate, in such a manner that even the profession they were attached to became detestable occupations in the eyes of the bhadraloks. But subsequent research has shown that there were Muslims and Hindus in the Badia community. Afterwards, the people belonging to the Nat, Badia, Bagdi, Jugi, and Mal communities were brought under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1911.36 The class of entertainers, in general, was not beyond suspicion. As their activities were mostly concentrated beyond the trajectory of civil society and were considered to be potential threat to the social norms, they were identified with sannyasis, sadhus, fakirs, dacoits, goondas, thugs, pastoralists, and herders.37 Meanwhile, however, non-Bengali writers also contributed to the highhanded attitude, as we have seen so far. Horatio Smith, an Anglo-Indian journalist, had written in this connection as early as 1851: India, in her high and palmy state, had also a dramatic literature of her own, and scenic representations to gratify the people.… [W]e shall … proceed to make a remark or two on the state of the drama as it now exists among the Bengalis. Of the execrable representations, called Jàtràs, we dare not give here a detailed description; They are wretched from the commencement to the fifth act. The plots are very often the amours of Krishna, or the love of Bidya and Sundar. In the representations of Krishná-játrá, boys, arrayed in the habit of Sakhis and Gopinis (milk-maids), cut the

principal figures on the stage. It would require the pencil of a master-painter to pourtray [sic] the killing beauty of these fairies of the Bengali stage. Their sooty complexion, their coal-black cheeks, their haggard eyes, their long-extended arms, their gaping mouths and their puerile attire excite disgust. Their external deformity is rivalled by their discordant voices. For the screechings of the night-owls, the howlings of the jackals, and the barkings of the dogs that bay the moon, are harmony itself compared with their horrid yells. Their dances are in strict accordance with the other accessories. In the evolutions of the hands and feet, dignified with the name of dancing, they imitate all posture and gestures calculated to soil the mind and pollute the fancy. The principal actors during the interludes are a mather, who enters the stage with a broomstick in his hand, and cracks a few stupid jest which set the audience in a roar of laughter; and his brother Bhuluá who, completely fuddled, amuses the spectators with the false steps of his feet.38

With regard to the vehemently expressed obscenity of language, such comments only added to the share the newspapers had in propagating the idea of social filth. The public theatre, which is believed to have democratized the proscenium theatre, brought other elements that also characterize a democratic process: disbelief, greed, controversies over financial transactions: ‘Nobody hesitated to sacrifice artistry at the prospect of the good fortune called the audience.’39 To cut a long story short, after the money came the disputes and then there were disruptions all over.40 A number of eminent theatre personalities of that period have stated that owing to financial disputes, the National Theatre fell apart,41 and subsequently two groups were formed, National Theatre and Hindu National Theatre, which merged again in 1874.42 Before the end of the year, due to financial reasons, serious internal disagreement surfaced once more, never to be healed.43 One of the vices, for which the popular cultural idiom had been sneered at, oozed into the proscenium practice and destroyed its integrity too. When the National Theatre was going through such dramatic ups and downs, Bengali Theatre took a bold step by introducing actresses, who happened to be prostitutes, in public theatre. Prior to that, female roles were played by male actors, though Lebedeff had cast women as early as 1795. The reason for introducing prostitutes was the unavailability of women from respectable families. But this novelty was not appreciated at all, for social outcasts were not allowed entry into the bhadralok society. Some time back, Amrita Bazar Patrika had predicted, ‘The family-women of this country will never enter into acting; perhaps the female characters have to be collected

from the group of social outcasts and it is yet to be decided whether that will benefit or cause harm to the country’.44 However, after the introduction of prostitutes, The Hindoo Patriot (18 August 1873) commented: Mr Michael Modhusudan Dutta’s classic drama of Sarmista was selected for the first performance. The actors performed their parts very creditably, the two actresses, who were professional women, we are informed, were most successful. We wish this dramatic crops [sic] had done without the actresses. It is true that professional women join the jattras [Jatra] and natches, but we had hoped that the managers of Bengali theatres would not bring themselves down to the level of jattrawallas.45

In its review of the same play, Bharat Sanskarak wrote, ‘There were two prostitutes among the artistes. Until now we saw them only in Jatra, Nach, Kirtan, Jhumur, but this is the first time that we experienced their acting in the open with the distinguished dignitaries of noble birth. It is always desirable that you, civilized sons, should stand on your dignity.’46 Amrita Bazar Patrika noted: Bengal Theatre is a new thing among the Bengali aristocracy. Acting becomes perfect when female characters are portrayed by women. But whether sin and misfortune are increased in society owing to the enactment of the female characters by the women who are cast out of society and have gone astray from the religious course is still subject to experimentation. The Bengal Theatre has undertaken this tough course. With a view to having a good taste of acting, many people of Calcutta are drawn to their theatre. For the sake of improving theatre performances, if we are to sacrifice a single person [those who frequent theatre halls] the loss can never ever be compensated.47

Maddhyastha also voiced a prolonged sarcastic accusation that all hell might break loose by the association of those ‘wicked’ women,48 whereas playwright and stage actor Amritalal Basu’s description of the prostitutes’ work ethic surely throws the Bengali aristocratic and editorial agenda, which gave birth to the proscenium stage, into question: We had to take on some actresses for the Gitabhinay, which we thought were indispensable in view of the few number of plays. I had a terrible misconception that being disrespectable dancers and singers, these women selected from a particular class would not be able to play the high-born female characters. The mistake was dispelled within two weeks after they started coming for rehearsals. The salary was very low then, yet five actresses came to us. Their sincerity, quest for learning, care, decency at the workplace, and candour compelled

many of us to reconsider our own character.49

When the establishment was worried about the quality of expression and the social standards of performers, the lifestyle and world-view of a large section of the bhadralok class was doubtlessly not beyond question. There is a voluminous collection of literary documents in Bengali that has discussed the pleasure pursuits by the babus of nineteenth-century Calcutta; the sophisticated English education could not dissuade many of them from being unscrupulous, ignoble and unsavoury for which the culture of the lok had been driven into a corner and the bhadraloks monopolized the cultural idioms. Even the so-called educative institutions were not free from such weaknesses. On 27 February 1873, Amrita Bazar Patrika wrote: NATIVE AMBITION.—Few years ago, it was a fashion with the English Editors to abuse the natives, especially when the market of politics happened to be dull, their columns were sure to be replete with such edifying articles as a desertation on the lying propensities of the natives, the ingratitude of the Bengalis, and so forth. But times are now changed. As the natives cannot throw aspersions on their rulers without bringing down upon their head the censure of their countrymen, so are the Europeans no longer in the position of abusing the natives with impunity. Both the races seem to be tired of abusing each other and come to a mutual understanding. The Englishman has changed its feeling, a better spirit pervades the columns of the Friend of India and even the most scurrilous Daily News has moderated its tone. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the Madras and Bombay Papers. Many of them still show signs of former rancorous feelings.50

Bharat Sanskarak also accused the vernacular newspapers for using abusive language against each other.51 Girishchandra Ghosh said: ‘Abuses and vituperation were so much liked by the people that editors of newspapers often indulged in filthy abuses. Those papers that could excel in abusing used to command a large number of subscribers. Those who were adept in the use of vituperative language were most honoured!’52 What was the fault, then, on the part of the popular culture? The clash of interest of the two classes was heightened when the sophisticated, elite Bengali theatres also encouraged the free mixing of men and women in their performances, which had already entered Jatra performances.53 Such ‘wantonness’ was even compared with the production of Gajadananda o Jubaraj, for which eventually the Dramatic Performances Act was imposed in 1876.54 Although an exception, Bharat Sanskarak actually hailed the legislation and considered it to be beneficial to the country.55 The newspapers

of this period carried many articles, which implored attention, mercy, kindness, pity, and equality from their rulers, in tune with which the social luminaries had already prepared the burial ground for the common people and their culture: ‘BIBIDHA’ PROCEEDINGS OF THE OBSCENE SOCIETY. I. All obscene books be suppressed, excepting those which are old; such books having been written in good old times must have by wear and tear lost much of their offensiveness. II. All modern obscene books be suppressed. The president Raja Kalikrishna having proposed an amendment in favour of Sanskrit Slokas, the sacred garb of which covers all grossness, the amended resolution was carried out. III. That agencies and branch associations be established all over the land to see that [a] people live chastely, talk chastely, and think chastely; [b] amorous songs, blandishing smiles, love sighs, twisting of the moustaches, whistling, blackening the teeth, chewing the beetle, play on the flute, combing the hair, wearing bordered clothes, looking at young females and such other satanic arts be suppressed; [c] domesticated animals, dogs, goats, pigeons, fowls, ducks in particular, be removed to a distance from human habitations and tended by eunuchs or persons with eyes covered and ears hermetically sealed, castrated animals excepted; [d] those who do not choose to part with their cattle &c, provide them with long coats in the case of male[,] flowing gowns in the case of female animals, till the rutting season arrives when they be removed to animal zenanas; [e] frogs, flies, mosquitoes, lizards and birds in general, except the decent crows and ravens, that call up evil thoughts in men and women by their obscene habits be destroyed or made His Honor’s short term prisoners. IV. That such words as may possibly give rise to amorous ideas in a sensitive mind be forthwith suppressed. As for example, marriage, pregnancy, delivery, kiss, embrace, sex, generation, procreation, womb, having breast, luscious cheek, rosy lips, languishing eyes, male, female, he, she, man, woman, wife, husband, love, not to speak of a thousand more obscene ones which decency prevents us from mentioning here. V. That the cultivation of such fruits and flowers as brinjal, banana, pomegranate, lotus, rose &c, be strictly prohibited in as much as they suggest obscene similies. VI. That woman the prime source of mischief be suppressed and the distinction of the sexes be henceforth abolished. This was [thought] impracticable by some and a warm discussion ensued. The following amendment was proposed:‘That woman the prime source of mischief be dressed in male attire with false moustaches and beards if necessary.’ This amended resolution, it was

VII.

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contended, would do away with the apparent distinction between the two sexes. However the amendment was dropped and the original resolution was carried by a large majority. That since child bearing is a form of obscenity which is very prevalent in this country, government be requested to make some such laws as to effectually put down this nasty practice. A member rose and proposed that those who have been already guilty of giving birth to children be required to make severe penance by repentance or giving alms to Brahmins or donations to the Reform Association of India or reciting the names of the Peagumbers seven and seventy times each according to the light of his own shastar. The proposal was carried with deep sighs. That as newly born babies are likely to convey obscene ideas even to the chastest mind, they be destroyed. A member reminded the society that there is a law prohibiting infanticide, whereupon it was resolved that government be petitioned to repeal this law. That men and women must not assemble together and go on pilgrimages or attend religious festivals. Exception. They might eat together or talk and amuse with one another provided they do so in good faith and are not Hindoos. That dancing and use of thin clothes by females be strictly prohibited. Exceptions polka and quaderrille dancing and other such dancings which amuse Europeans; ball dresses, summer evening dresses &c. That obscene publications in newspapers be prohibited. Such extracts in a quasi religious newspaper as ‘An extraordinary charge against a lady’ [vide the Indian Mirror, 3 Sept. 1873], ‘The first Lady barrister’ [vide the same 9th Sept. 1873], ‘Influences of kisses’ [vide the same Oct 1, 1873], ‘Lady and her page’ [vide the same Oct 9, 1873], Police cases involving rape, &c, are excepted. Proposed by Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen and seconded by Dr Smith that the society should avoid fuss of every kind, that copies of resolutions be circulated throughout India, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the United States of America, and that impressive and eloquent lectures strongly condemning obscenity in every shape be delivered in India and England by persons able and willing to do so.56

The origin of ‘obscenity’—in the design for the containment of the popular cultural vocabulary—will lead to chiefly one text that was singled out for criticism by almost all the critics—Vidya-Sundar—through which surfaced the nineteenth-century Hindu–Muslim dichotomy, though there were other similar texts which were also adapted for popular practice. With the rise of Calcutta as a business centre of the British East India Company, people came from far off and began to mix with the local inhabitants; soon they developed the habit of, among other things,

frequenting the quarters of baijis,57 women who sang and danced in front of men, and who were free to choose sexual partners from among them. Rabindranath Tagore was of the view that in the evenings, the merchants, weary of day-long work, wanted the excitement of temporary amusement, not the essence of literature.58 ‘Khola and Nupurs gave place to Tobla and ghunghur. The old Vaishnaba lyric and songs (Mahajani Padas) were replaced by newly composed songs. They were set to new songs and the upcountry tune of the tappas was gone.’59 In the course of time, the divine love stories of Radha and Krishna were replaced by the mundane, carnal amour of ordinary men and women like Vidya and Sundar, and the activities of Malini, their go-between. The sensual story of Vidya and Sundar relied heavily on mushy Bengali sentiment; their sexuality and the overt presence of the body in performance became highly objectionable, whereupon Jatra came to be detested by the establishment, which vilified it in very strong language, ironically popularizing it even further. Moreover, in historicizing the sensuality in Vidya-Sundar, some critics maintained that the sexuality was rooted in the Islamic rule over India, which led to the ruin of, especially in Bengal, traditional Hindu culture. ‘[The] dramatic institution is one of them. The Mohomedans were without any national theatre and it received no tangible support from them.’60 From the following accounts, it is perceived that apart from the sexual connotations and ‘poor literary standards’ of Jatra and other popular forms, the connection of its main content, the story of Vidya and Sundar, to the Islamic literary vision, became an unavoidable reason for (a certain section of) colonial academia to lash out at its ‘vulgarity’. In one of his lectures in 1909 at the University of Calcutta, the Bengali professor Dinesh Chandra Sen said: Raja Krishna Chandra was the great patron of Bengali literature of the 18th century. Poetry under such patronage became the creation of schoolmen and courtiers. It no longer aimed at offering its tribute to God but tried to please the fancy of a Raja; the poets found the gates of the palace open to receive them and cared not if the doors of heaven were shut…. The Persian poems which were favoured in this age, also contain long drawnout similies verging on the ridiculous, andthe nobleman and scholars, who prided themselves on a vain-glorious pedantry, encouraged our poets to introduce similar artificial compositions into Bengali.… Not only in the style of writing but in its subject-matter also, it showed the control of those evil stars that held sway over the literary horizon of Bengal at this time. The romantic conceptions of Persian tales are often singularly unpleasing to the Bengali mind; especially does this remark apply to those kutnis or serving women, who

acted as agents in matters of illicit passion. Yet these women figure prominently in the literature of this period…. Indeed the Hindu poets had hitherto taken particular care to keep scenes of illicit love out of their poems. But the kutni now became a very common thing in our literature, especially in the poems of Vidya-Sundara. A very striking instance of such women as figuring in the poetry of the age is found in the character of Hira malini in Bharata Chandra’s Annada Mangala—the most popular Bengali poem of the day. … [T]he court literature of Bengal presents a striking difference to the earlier Bengali works. The style and the spirit both became depraved—the former by a vain-glorious pedantry which made descriptions grotesque by their over-drawn niceties, the serious often passing into the burlesque—and the latter by scurrilous obscenities grosser than anything in Sterne, Smollett or Wycherley and by the introduction of characters like those of Hira malini and Vidu Brahmini—accessories to illicit love of the most revolting type.61

It is this ‘revolting’ love inherited from the Islamic past which caused the abhorrence of a squad of theatre, media, and academic personalities. That this ‘illicit’ love affair could throw the social order into complete disarray, a purely Western interpretation of sexuality might have guided the social teachers to sermonize against the ‘illicitness’, whereas, strangely enough, by virtue of spirituality alone, divine illicitness and the activities of the kutnis or dutis62 depicted in the Hindu texts met the moral standard of that age. As a matter of fact, the Hindu–Muslim dichotomy and the resulting spiritual– profane duality also led to the common hatred against quotidian popular cultural practices. With regard to the drawbacks63 of Jatra, one can reveal how the objections contributed towards a common practice of interfering criticism, a typical characteristic of this age.64 The communal harmony, which was reflected in Kabigan, developed a rift within due to the ‘spatial dispersal of the lower orders’.65 Being forced to relocate to distant or ‘other’ parts of the city, the Muslims, for example, started getting isolated.66 Kabi-singers dominated the cultural sphere of Calcutta till the 1830s, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, they almost disappeared from the scene, and were replaced by the Jatra performers and Panchali singers.67 The flourishing Battala literature—the amours of Vidya–Sundar, Radha–Krishna, Shiva–Parvati being its important subjects— also paved the way for the disappearance of Kabigan.68 The ‘innovations’ of Jatra, Panchali, and other performances came out of the strong presence of this type of literature—the challenges they faced from the printing press.69 Nevertheless, from the history of the evolution of popular cultural practices in nineteenth-century Calcutta, it seems that power—political, financial, and

academic—decided the quality and type of literary and performing productions. The section of society, which monopolized all sorts of power, decided the standard and subject of such productions. Their choice and preferences upped the index of literary or other output. The previous standards were made redundant by the influential gentry. But humour, satire, obscenity, irony, sarcasm, caricature, and parody continued throughout the century in one form after another not just as ‘ornamentation’ or disturbing element, but also as the means to protest against the humiliation70 and discrimination. ‘The ribaldry and sexual jokes in the jatras were often an expression of the common man’s desire to thumb his nose at the selfrestraints and sanctimonious platitudes of the religious elders of society.’71 Their expressions might have been ‘bawdy’, ‘satirical’, ‘iconoclastic’, or ‘outrageous’, but that was not necessarily suggestive of a voyeuristic pornographic desire;72 it may also be construed as the celebration of ‘the world of the senses, a playful expression of primitive sensuality’73 and gaiety, which, perhaps, was the driving force to overcome the feeling of deprivation and dejection.74 ‘Like many other expressions of humour, the secret source of the comicality of Calcutta folk culture was not joy, but sorrow and helplessness in an oppressive environment.’75 The educated gentry were hardly bothered with such emotional complexities; they were celebrating Englishness. Contrary to the native approach, an editorial in The Times of London in 1873, referring to the marginalization of the indigenous popular culture of India under the impact of a foreign culture and its replacement by a new elite literature, commented: The love songs and idolatrous legends which we have in great measure displaced are the material out of which a native popular literature might, in due time, have been evolved. If, therefore, the products of Indian literature have an appearance in some degree forced and artificial, we must remember that India has not been suffered to follow her own course, and that the growth of her literature has been set aside as completely as her political development by the overwhelming influence of a new power. We find ample signs of life, of ferment, of activity, but of quite another kind from those which would have followed in the natural order of growth and change….76

Probably that was why ‘the markets, libraries and archives in England’ at that point in time were being stacked with Indian folklore collections. ‘The entertainment provided by performers and their arts were part of the colonial

booty.… The British collectors called India the “goldmine” of folklore, and there was talk of “who shall go to the digging”.’77 These facts suggest that there was a section of the aristocracy who expressed opinion on the other side of developing practices, who observed the development of cultural consciousness more critically.78 However, the prejudiced discourse of the construction of cultural practices from the top continued until the Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) of the 1930s decided to pay attention to the people’s culture. Later, the IPTA bore the same ideology in its constitution. For now, it would suffice to say that the causes for the mounting tension within these organizations were not only hidden in their ideological incompetence, but also in the intrusive proscenium stage which, still thought to be a potent medium of art, eventually came to disunite the people’s theatre movement altogether. We need to understand the complex nature of a new cultural politics and its relationship to an exclusionary stage, which prepared the ground for Badal Sircar’s entry into theatre in the early 1950s. This is the second phase of the history of cultural consciousness of the bhadraloks. Although modern Bengali theatre emerged during the colonial period, most of the plays are devoid of the anguish of political repression, containing, instead, allegorical representations of historical incidents or mythological stories for igniting the spirit of patriotism on the structural foundation of Western dramaturgy.79 In fact, once done with the process of structural validation (of the proscenium stage), such quest for derivative artistry is not unnatural at the young stage, especially at a time when the colonized mind was being purged constantly by Western standards of justice and ethics. With the advent of commercialism and, more importantly, the Dramatic Performances Act in 1876, Bengali theatre became a mouthpiece for Hindu revivalism and a platform for spectacular extravaganza. The dramatists capitalized on public sentiments and drew large numbers of spectators to the theatre. The early theatre thinking of Bengal was not exceptional in this regard. Through the selection of Sanskrit plays, stories from Hindu mythology, and incidents depicting new moral standards for Hindus (especially the women), the consciousness of a mono-religious culture80 was systematically imbued in society. The plays of Jyotirindranath Tagore are good examples. In his autobiography, he wrote, ‘After the Hindu Mela, it

frequently occurred to me how the people’s affection [for the country] and patriotism could be awakened. Finally, I thought, perhaps the purpose would be served by using past heroic stories and the glorious narratives of India in the plays.’81 ‘India’ was unquestioningly identified as ‘Hindu’. Despite some apparent changes in Bengali theatre by the impact of the middle-class-led Swadeshi Movement of 1905, and the movement against the Partition of Bengal, and the emergence of rousing classics such as Shah Jahan or Siraj-ud-daula, no substantial transformation was discerned: it was mostly confined to a Hindu discourse due to its inspiration from the political unrest conspicuously dyed in Hinduism.82 Eventually, when the need to spread the struggle for Independence among the poor masses was felt, the routine theatre practice, considered to have already reached its ‘modernity’,83 was at a loss; the lameness of this commercial theatre became evident with the growing force of struggle.84 A sharp decline in the standard of public theatre could be observed during the first two decades of the twentieth century. A close observation of the list of plays staged between 1912 and 1922 will reveal the state of decline. All the prominent actors were gone. As a result, in this decade, neither were quality original plays staged, nor was there any powerful player in public theatre. Some plays were repeated time and again till they lost their public appeal. The standard of performance also deteriorated.85 The first decade of the twentieth century was also not very productive even for Rabindranath Tagore. ‘Nothing in the shape of drama emerged during this time.’86 The dramatic inspiration returned in 1908 that ushered in new directions in his career.87 Between 1910 and 1912, there appeared Raja, Achalayatan, and Dakghar, three of the finest plays in Bengali. Prior to that, he expressed his ideas on theatre in an essay titled ‘Rangamancha’ (The Stage), ‘which indicated that a complete volte-face had occurred in his thoughts about the theatre’.88 Tagore’s subsequent plays were conceived on the lines he conceptualized in this essay.89 Ananda Lal observed, however, ‘After his return from the England-America trip in 1913, Tagore continued producing new plays at Santiniketan. However, the distance from Calcutta delimited the possibilities of gaining a wider audience. Except for a few cognoscenti among his friends who travelled between Calcutta and Santiniketan, people outside the small school community remained blissfully

ignorant of Tagore’s theatrical advances.’90 The advent of a new style and atmosphere through Sisir Kumar Bhaduri during the 1920s showed rays of hope for the establishment.91 His selection of plays, including Tagore’s, change from artificial to naturalistic acting, arrangement, and presentation of the stage—a significant attitudinal change could be observed everywhere. But the most significant transformation took place ‘in the “production” of plays in the technical sense. Hitherto the term “producer” or “production” was unknown in the theatre. There was stage manager, the trainer or the motion-master, but no producer.’92 Sisir Kumar Bhaduri’s joining the public theatre gave a great impetus to the performers. Under the influence of fresh blood, Bengali theatre was rejuvenated once again. ‘With the arrival of these new artistes with their new style of acting, a new consciousness about the art of production of plays, the application of new technique … Bengali theatre reached its peak in the twenties of the present century.’93 On the other side, his personal attempts were based on the systems of old proprietorship and worn-out subject matter, aimed at a traditional audience, hence he could not inspire others to follow his reformations within the old decrepit system of the commercial stage:94 the failure subsequently became the cause of his agony.95 Like other directors/producers of the time, he failed to realize the significance of political conflicts, the arising demands of society96 and the changes taking place in the cultural sphere.97 His field of experimentation, the professional stage, was still not acknowledged as a powerful and indispensable instrument of the freedom movement,98 though the possibility of any alternative was not visible. ‘It was with the outbreak of the Second World War whose shadow fell on Calcutta in 1942 that the evil days began and for the next ten years the very existence of the public theatre was at stake.’99 The crowded city assumed a different look. People who were scared for their lives did not have money to lavish on entertainments. To make the situation even worse, there came the shocking man-made famine of Bengal in 1943. The streets of Calcutta were filled with thousands of starving faces and lifeless bodies. The air was heavy with the cries for food and lamentations for dearest ones. In the background, there was the haunting communal tension born of the two-nation theory, and at the same time came the clarion call of Subhas Chandra Bose to march towards Delhi. Despite such political restlessness, Calcutta theatres continued

to stage plays, though with occasional closures. After the War and amidst negotiations between the British and the Indian leaders on transferring power, there came the ‘Great Calcutta Killings’ of 16 August 1946—the devastating communal riot between the Muslims and the Hindus—which took a toll of thousands of lives. Indian Independence came by dint of several diplomatic compromises and at the cost of the partition of the Punjab and Bengal provinces, leading to severe fratricidal massacres. Further devastation followed when millions of people crossed over the newly drawn boundaries in search of new homes. They encountered irreversible refugee problems, which threw the normal course of life out of gear. Naturally, these times were not at all suitable for theatre performances. In spite of such adverse moments, the most significant development of twentieth-century Bengali theatre took place during this dark period, reminding us of the burgeoning theatre practice in Calcutta in 1857.100 The years prior to Indian Independence provided the impetus to young writers and artistes to join the cultural movement against worldwide political and social fascism. With the establishment of the PWA in 1935, Indian writers entered a new age of collective identity, which was pushed forth by the IPTA movement in the 1940s,101 though both were beset with self-destructive problems. In the year 1935, the PWA was founded in London by a handful of Indian intellectuals to (i) establish organisation of writers to correspond to the various linguistic zones of India; to coordinate these organisations by holding conferences and by publishing literature; to establish a close connection between the central and local organisations and to cooperate with those literary organisations whose aims did not conflict with the basic aims of the association; (ii) [t]o form branches of the Association in all the important towns of India; (iii) [t]o produce and to translate literatures of a progressive nature, to fight cultural reaction, and in this way to further the cause of India’s freedom and social regeneration; (iv) [t]o protect the interests of progressive authors; and (v) [t]o fight for the right of free expression of thought and opinion.102

The eventual failure of the PWA was inherent in the texture of this manifesto. It lacked the vigour and zeal necessary to ignite the fire in the heart of the writers against imperialism and fascism. Without analysing the conditions and nature of development of Indian literature, the young Marxist writers and planners of the PWA applied their experiences of European literature mechanically,103 and tried to create a literary consciousness, which,

they thought, would be progressive in nature. The aims and objectives of the association were laid down in its constitution with no definite idea of either revolution or the humanities; in other words, superficiality, instead of progressiveness, prevailed. The situation was rightly assessed by M.G. Hallet, the home secretary to the Government of India. In his circular (‘Warning Conveyed to Local Governments Regarding the Indian Progressive Writers’ Association’, 1936), Hallet expressed his observations thus: ‘The proclaimed aims of the Association are comparatively innocuous and suggest that it concerns itself solely with the organisation of journalists and writers and the promotion of interest in literature of a progressive nature.’104 Soon after, the association was dragged into a series of bitter discussions about theoretical purity, and its revolutionary ideologies were relegated to the back seat.105 As a result of these and more serious problems, the rift in the Marxist cultural movement was evident between 1939 and 1941.106 The Bengal unit of the IPTA was formed in 1943, as a branch of the AntiFascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association of Bengal and the cultural unit of the Communist Party of India (CPI),107 with a view to fight against fascism. The mass tragedy during the Second World War, the great famine of Bengal in 1943, death by plague, flood, storm, black marketing, profiteering—all these induced the IPTA to reach out to the people.108 The association started its cultural work among the masses by disseminating news of the misfortune of the common people, collecting funds from different sources to contribute to the People’s Relief Committee. It ran alongside from one corner of the country to the other with its repertoire of songs, dances, shadow theatre, short tableaux, and plays, which essentially portrayed the agony and protest of the toiling class.109 As a brief interlude, the name of the Youth Cultural Institute, established in the 1940s, is also noteworthy for pursuing all these activities. Although the movement started by the Bengal unit of the IPTA was an urban enterprise by a group of Left enthusiasts mostly educated in the colonial education system, in keeping with its Marxist ideology, the association was able to spread its activities to remote villages and small towns with great success.110 In this sense, the IPTA can be described as the first urban cultural organization to bring out cultural practices from the possession of the privileged class and disseminate them among the common people. But it must be admitted at the same time that while the middle-class

actors portrayed the impecunious characters, the playwrights belonging to the same class wrote the scripts. In most cases, the real have-nots had no role to play, except for becoming the subject of the educated urban intelligentsia.111 Sadhana Naithani is critical of the nationalist and communist approach to folk performances of India during the freedom struggle from a different perspective that may have a bearing on the polarity suggested by Himani Bannerji. In Naithani’s views, the freedom movement made use of folk performers and their repertoire as ‘“ours”, unadulterated by the coloniser’s culture and education, and thus attracted the attention, interest and passion of educated, nationalist and communist Indians … but again, no one was thinking of the performers, their changing lives and forms.’112 This attitude did not change even after Independence.113 On the one hand, folk literature was advertised as the national heritage, used for the construction of the nation’s image; on the other hand, its bearers/possessors were forced to trudge a wretched life: ‘the problem lies in the economic determinism being applied to folk performers. Their identity as performers and artists has been constantly undermined.’114 However, along the lines of the PWA and the Anti-Fascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association, another organization was founded in 1942 which deserves to be mentioned here as the forerunner of such unions as the Actors’ Association, Radio Artists’ Association, and Association of the CineTechnicians within and outside Bengal—the Artists’ Association, Bengal, which was the ‘first Trade Union, an assembly against exploitation, by the intellectuals of India’.115 The role this association assumed fetched great success in the artists’ struggle against oppression and inequality.116 Amidst such dramatic progress, the IPTA was on the march with new enthusiasm and zeal to spread its ideologies of socialism and communism among the destitute of the country. The success of the people’s theatre was heightened, so much so that both the British administration and the professional theatre owners were alarmed to the extent that not only were the IPTA’s activities kept under strict surveillance, but theatre halls (even of Sisir Kumar Bhaduri and Ahindra Chaudhuri) too were not rented out to them, thanks to the vested interests of the ruling class.117 But the drawbacks of metamorphosis kept growing in the midst of communist idealism within the organization: firstly, due to the lack of understanding of the changes taking place in national and international politics;118 and secondly, instead of spreading its ideologies

among the people and strengthening the movement, some members of the IPTA had developed bourgeois tastes for popular culture.119 The selection process of the members for the cultural movement and the division of labour among the important members of the organization were arbitrary.120 Besides, the reformist interests of the general secretary of the CPI, Puran Chand Joshi, made its cultural organization trail behind the ideology. He was rather inclined to hold cultural events in Bombay, which ultimately encouraged urbanism and competition with the bourgeois institutions.121 This trend ushered in a new tendency of inviting the established artistes instead of the ordinary ones in order to make the events successful122 in the presence of a crowd of educated, middle-class, and upper-class audience, who were interested only in fashionable socialism.123 In pursuit of a voracious desire for art, fame, and ambition, the mass movement and hope for a revolution were sacrificed.124 In Calcutta, the sweeping success of the first production of Nabanna on a revolving stage made one of its directors, Sombhu Mitra, more rigid, so much so that he refused to produce Nabanna on a simple stage elsewhere (for instance, in the villages), nor were other members of the association ready to go out, whereas they were supposed to do so, at least that was why they had come together initially.125 For these reasons, at the last stage of Puran Chand Joshi’s career, those apolitical or professional artistes left the people’s theatre and tried to build their own groups. By this time the Congress leaders had been freed, the office of the IPTA and its workers were attacked—two of them were gunned down at Charu Prakash Ghosh’s residence—and Congress–Communist fights took place during the last election under the British dominion: these incidents induced those with feeble or no idealism of the people’s theatre to leave,126 though the blame for being flushed out was laid on the Communist Party, its policies, and instructions.127 Then, there came the Ranadive era of stringent measures, only to expedite the exodus from the association and eventually give birth to the so-called Nabanatya Andolan (new theatre movement), and later the Sat (honest) and Goshthi Natya Andolan (group theatre movements). From this overview of the development of the most promising theatre movement in Bengal, which wanted to work among the proletariat, but ended up in sheer confusion, if not retrogression, it seems as if the emblematic qualities of intellectualism and elitism—inherited from the colonial past and

possibly well applied against the bourgeoning local thinkers—of the previous century were reincarnated in a completely different ideological behaviour. The striking similarities between the period when Bengali theatre had just started taking shape, the strategies of getting it validated, the sophistries, the tactics of eliminating all that belonged to the rural poor, and the quest for the betterment of theatre in the 1940s, its unwillingness to cast more than a token glance at the villagers, the pressure to return to a particular type of exclusivist stage, and the infighting of many IPTA members, suggest that modern Bengali theatre never belonged to the common people; it always remained an instrument of the middle- and upper-class bhadraloks for controlling the cultural discourse which later sustained the free and unrestrained growth of market economy. Manoj Mitra, now one of Bengal’s most prominent theatre personalities, lamented, ‘The people’s theatre prepared the ground for us and we are making profits by sheer hoodwinking…. Our shrewdness is visible in the form and content. Now we know what can be sold and how to win admiration. We are going far from the idealism of Gananatya [people’s theatre] by deceiving ourselves.’128 Probably that is why the subsequent history of ‘group’ theatres is dull with groupism and the egotism of the omnipotent administrative heads, leading in turn to their disintegration and the birth of new groups in many cases. On the other hand, cultural organizations like the Congress Sahitya Sangha (Bengal) or the Indian National Theatre (Bombay) led by the National Congress failed to unite the progressive artistes of the country.129 As the year 1946 drew to a close, in addition to British oppression, the hostility of Congress workers just freed from confinement lashed out at the communists.130 The CPI was banned and, immediately after Independence, the Congress government invoked the notorious Dramatic Performances Act of 1876 more strictly; on 26 March 1948, the CPI was proscribed again. Fifty-nine plays, all produced by the IPTA (Bengal), were scrutinized by the Calcutta police commissioner and nearly all of them were banned.131 In the 1950s, a new order emerged at the centre. In order to further the progress of national culture, various institutions such as Sahitya Akademi, Sangeet Natak Akademi, and National Book Trust were established; government assistance was extended to cultural exponents, writers, musicians, and performers; cultural exchanges between India and other countries were being encouraged. But the opposition saw cronyism and nepotism in those governmental

undertakings.132 The crises within the Communist Party were spiralling as well.133 The predicament was obvious in areas other than the cultural front. On the peasant front, there were critical illnesses like ‘casteism, communalism, the neglect by the movement of problems of peasant women, the ruling party’s effort to disrupt organised peasant movements’;134 the additional difficulties in the trade union movement after the formation of the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) by the Indian National Congress (INC) and the establishment of the arbitration boards by the state governments to settle disputes between the employers and the employees left its scars on the cultural sphere, too.135 During this period of confusion, dereliction, and suppression of the Marxist ideologies and emergence of the rightist politics in India, Sircar left the CPI like many others. Once out of the organizational politics, everything appeared empty to him. In order to fill up that emptiness, he felt drawn to theatre—the proscenium theatre—which could be well described as typical of the Bengali theatre retrogressing towards the imported culture (stage) of the colonial period.

Two POLITICS TO PERFORMANCE SPROUTING SIRCARI THEATRE

Triangle. (From L to R) Sunila Pradhan, Amrish Puri, and G. Bangera in Saari Raat, the Hindi production of Sararattir. Production: Theatre Unit, Mumbai, 1972; direction: Amrish Puri. Source: Natya Shodh Sansthan, Calcutta.

Autobiography can be conceived ‘politically’. One knows that one’s life is similar to that of a thousand others, but through ‘chance’ it has had opportunities that the thousand others in reality could not or did not have. By narrating it, one creates this possibility, suggests the process, indicates the opening. Autobiography therefore replaces the ‘political’ or ‘philosophical essay’: it describes in action what otherwise is deduced logically. Autobiography certainly has a great historical value in that it shows life in action and not just as written laws or dominant moral principles say it should be.1

The history of the Third Theatre in Bengal has a history, too. But the following account will show that, at least to begin with, there was barely any possibility of its existence. It was the journey of a theatre-lover student, who became an active Communist Party member. At one stage, theatre was almost relegated and his profession came into prominence, which happened to expose him to the vast world of British drama. The impression we get from Sircar’s autobiography of his professional life suggests that there was very little political activity, which hardly indicates that once he was a member of the CPI, or that immediately after leaving the party, his engagement with drama or town planning was an expression of frustration and restlessness, as he wrote in Prabaser Hijibiji (Scribbles Abroad), a collection of letters and diaries.2 But in my interview with him, he gave the impression that the shock of leaving the party made him a silent practitioner of Marxism.3 Here, it must be categorically mentioned that no objective source material is available on this entire period, for which I had to depend largely on Sircar’s autobiography and personal writings without being able to verify their authenticity. As I have mentioned earlier that in order to get an idea of his formative years, compare (examine) that with his later claims, and understand the nature of Sircar’s contribution to theatrical discourses, this chapter discusses those stages of his life and career which helped him construct the road to the proscenium theatre and beyond. Going by the trend of amateur theatre practised by middle-class Bengali youth, he too exercised his skills in theatre during his graduation and professional years till the late 1960s,4 though the initial years were driven towards the fulfilment of the personal desire of a civil-engineer-turned-town-planner after disillusionment with institutional politics, with drama a distant secondary activity. Born to ‘middle-middle class’ Christian parents, Sircar spent his childhood

in the heart of Calcutta and received a ‘high’ level of education in the colonial system—a set of prized opportunities many would have envied in those days. This probably explains the reason for his admittedly lack of clear ideas of the rural theatre of India. However, in defence of the delayed initiation he explained, ‘The forces of change were there all through the period, working within, almost secretly’.5 An avid reader of plays from his early years in the Scottish Church Collegiate School, Sircar commented about his reading habits: People normally read novels and short stories and watch plays. I relished reading dramas. Studying in a Bengali-medium school, Scottish Church Collegiate, it was naturally Bengali compositions to begin with. But, as the family’s stock of Bengali plays ran out, I thought of teaching myself a bit of English. I was delighted to be introduced by my mother … to grandmother’s [Virginia Mary Nandy] collection of Western literature. Grandma, incidentally, was amongst India’s first women physicians and very well-read.6

The Bengali plays included those by Girishchandra Ghosh, Dwijendra Lal Roy, and Kshirodprasad Vidyavinod; he also listened to radio drama, occasionally wrote plays, and participated in amateur acting, but never had an opportunity to visit any theatre.7 He recounts his first experience of writing, directing, and acting as follows: ‘The venue was this very room [in his ancestral house off Beadon Street]. During the holidays after my matric exams in 1941, I adapted Cinderella from my sister’s textbook and enacted it, with cousins and friends, before a family gathering. Casting myself in the plum male role.’8 Otherwise a normal child, he was an introvert and suffered from an inferiority complex, which also prevented his active participation in theatre.9 He admitted that the reason for his detachment from theatrical pursuits, even during his days in Bengal Engineering College (B.E. College) much later, was rooted in the ever-increasing psychological pressure from his family as well as middle-class society.10 However, he read plays voraciously: ‘Shaw was an instant favourite. I ran through most of his plays by the time I was in college.… Couldn’t put my teeth into Shakespeare till then. I was irresistibly drawn to the humour of Shaw and Moliere and O’Neill’s grimness.’11 Acquiring information about the development of world politics—the brutality of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the dictatorship of Franco in Spain and its civil war, Japan’s attack on China and seizure of other Asian countries one after the other, Germany’s uninterrupted eastward march—

from newspapers, books, and word of mouth, experiencing the price hike of essential commodities and their eventual disappearance from the market— leading to his learning of two new words, ‘hoarding’ and ‘black market’— young Sircar remained otherwise calm and content, with his share of juvenile pranks and frivolities.12 Such indifference could not be maintained for a long time. It was during his first year in Scottish Church College that, appalled at the scare of the rampant Japanese army moving towards India, blackouts, airraid sirens, and Japanese bombing in Calcutta, the Sircar family moved out of the city like many others.13 However, Badal and his father stayed back. Though these events did not seem to leave strong impressions on him at that stage, physics, chemistry, and biology—he acknowledged—rather shook his blind faith in Christianity and the sermons of the Bible.14 One of his close friends, Ajit Narayan Basu (nicknamed Kanu), who was also his nephew, and other acquaintances of Sircar joined the Labour Party, which later merged with the CPI, during their schooldays.15 Though it took Sircar some more years to become an active member of the CPI, some of his activities suggest that a political consciousness was taking shape within. Still not very concrete about his ideologies, Sircar and others, moved by Gandhi’s clarion call of Quit India and the August Movement, were seized by the idea of burning a tramcar. None of their ‘impractical’ plans16 materialized, but some disgraceful incidents of oppression could not escape his eyes. That is why the octogenarian mind could not excuse his own boyhood callousness and indifference to the social wounds. He uncompromisingly criticized himself for his absorption in petty amusements when the people of Calcutta were run over by speeding vehicles of the US army encamped in the city after the Pearl Harbour attack. Yet, he was insulted by the soldiers’ shameless indecency with prostitutes in the open, somewhat happy with the decreasing rate of unemployment, and, again, injured by black marketing, the 1943 famine, and throngs of starved faces heading towards Calcutta.17 For his own superficiality, he put the blame entirely on his lack of clear ideas about contemporary global and national incidents, and his own youthful fun and facile friendships derisively antithetical to the social reality.18 His routine life continued, including writing a few plays and engaging in producing them in the living room or elsewhere.19 His dwindling faith in religion withered in the very first year at B.E. College. Sircar revolted against his orthodox Christian father and stopped paying weekly visits to the church.

His father reacted sharply,20 but his mother and elder sister urged him to make compromises; in order to protect his father’s social prestige, they implored Sircar to visit church occasionally even if he did not believe in its practices. Their lessons to be sanctimonious solidified his disrespect for them, whereas reverence for his father increased because of his straightforwardness.21 To our great disappointment, Sircar depicted only the gloomy pictures of his political career; I also felt the bitterness in him at the time of interviewing him. Sircar himself confessed that he and his friend Kanu felt a constant pressure from the middle-class society. Kanu found an outlet in politics,22 but he had nothing as such until he read A. Leontiev’s Political Economy.23 Sircar wrote: I became an atheist by the drive of my own sense of logic and understanding and not by the influence of any guru. Similarly, nobody initiated me into politics. My feeling of the stress around was blind, meaning that there was no solution; everything had to be accepted. But Leontiev’s book awakened me first—this stress was not my personal problem; this was a contemporary matter. The society was changed in the past, it can also be changed now and it has to be changed—that is the only duty.24

Young Sircar started borrowing political books from Kanu and discussed matters with like-minded people; in short, he entered into a different world where passion for theatre dwindled for a few years,25 and the thought for changing his surroundings became prominent. Writing plays became an occasional matter during 1945–6; instead, something more concrete attracted him: by this time he was initiated into politics. During this period, the CPI adopted the People’s War line; therefore, Sircar and the others had to maintain a low profile for fear of being attacked or getting arrested, though it had no bearing on his academic life. Simultaneously, he was serving his apprenticeship as a communist worker, which was not hidden to his parents for long.26 Having finished his studies at the age of 22, Sircar set off for Khaparkheda village in Maharashtra in July 1947 to join a Marwari concern as an apprentice engineer.27 But he did not like his job much. Amid a drab, secluded lifestyle, he found the Communist Party office and got some relief from the company of his colleagues, clients, company officials, and their leisure activities.28 In spite of devotion to the CPI, his affection for the party

never went unquestioned, though these doubts were never spoken out. Sircar put down his experience thus: ‘Puran Chand Joshi was the then General Secretary (one month before Indian Independence); the slogan was—“All support to the Nehru Government”. Everything got confused; but to disobey the party-policy was beyond thought; to question the same was unimaginable even.’29 It was there that he came to know about Independence a month later. After another month or so, he left the job and found another job in Calcutta of assistant professorship, which eventually led him to cut off all connections with his family.30 Now, teaching and party work became all-important in his life. Kanu was in the Agitation-Propaganda group, while Sircar himself belonged to the Trade Union section.31 His duty, along with that of a fellow comrade, was to look after the problems and demands of two private concerns. A critical Sircar would comment, regarding his job, that all of their policies were not correct.32 Apart from the objections on strategic grounds, he had serious antipathy towards the CPI decision to support the Congressled state government.33 So, when Puran Chand Joshi, a revisionist general secretary, was replaced by Bhalchandra Trimbak Ranadive at the Second Party Congress in Calcutta in 1948 (28 February–7 March), many like Sircar exulted because they thought that at last the policy of direct struggle would prevail over the period of compromise.34 Consequently, the party acted in apprehension of being proscribed. Many were taken into custody, but small fry like Sircar were let off to work in a cell or go underground, where later he got promoted to cell secretary, a little before the party was declared illegal.35 Life in the cell was risky and certainly clandestine. The CPI members had to work surreptitiously; the general policy was dangerous, often of guerrilla nature. The Congress government launched fierce police attacks on the revolutionaries. Many communist workers and leaders were either arrested and tortured in the lock-ups or went underground during this time. Sircar was transferred from the Maniktala branch (in north Calcutta) to the rail front. To him, the inference of this transfer seemed a demotion, but also a promotion because now he became a member of the Calcutta Central Strike Committee. Simultaneously, he performed the role of the cell secretary on someone’s behalf.36 He changed address in quick succession, to put up with a membercouple and then at a mess. His role as a party member was to maintain regular contacts with the student hostels to draw these students into the

movement.37 Suddenly, his friend and comrade Barin Saha was suspended from the party. Though he himself did not explain the cause, according to Sircar, it was due to his protest against the immoralities of a party leader hiding in a white men’s colony.38 After a few months, Sircar discontinued teaching and eventually resigned to work for the party.39 Even the mess where he used to stay did not seem safe; so, he moved in with one of his relatives. On 5 March 1949, acting upon the instructions of the party, Sircar and others assembled at Sealdaha railway station to initiate the all-India rail strike that was earlier scheduled for 9 March. They were to be joined by a few thousand female comrades of the women’s front from south Calcutta and workers from Khidirpur (in southwest of Calcutta). Instead, only 20-odd female comrades turned up, which was not at all sufficient to seize control of the Sealdaha station and stage a chakka bandh (literally, stopping of wheels, that is, immobilization of vehicles). By this time, police had cordoned off the whole area. So, Sircar and other leaders decided to shout slogans and walk down the rail tracks to the Beliaghata locomotive shed. There they addressed a gathering and dispersed before the police could reach.40 Sircar and others were content that given the small turnout, their guerrilla strategy was appropriate and rightly executed.41 But the next day, their strategy came under furious attack by the party leaders. It was suggested that they should have resorted to militant actions instead of employing guerrilla strategies; there was no mention of the dearth of supporters in that criticism. Sircar wrote, ‘The thought that the leaders were not as I had believed, started taking over my long-standing orthodox belief from that day’.42 On 8 March, he attended a secret meeting in the white men’s colony, where one central committee leader suggested that a strike would be possible even if 30 determined comrades armed with rods went out on the streets. The leader said, ‘Our main target would be the police, then their hired goons; the last target would be the workers’.43 Hearing this, a hitherto silent, seated Sircar raised his head and spoke up for the first time: ‘Workers will be our target?’44 That was all. He did not remember what the leader said after that. Sircar too did not want to comment any further. By then, his deep-seated faith in political leaders had been reduced to dust. His friends Kanu and Barin were arrested soon after. During the period of inner-party struggle, or the criticism of the party line by aggrieved comrades,45 Sircar sent a critical

analysis of the party in writing to the top brass, which led to his immediate suspension from the party. Two of his friends were also suspended for supporting him.46 Sircar was assigned to a cell at Beliaghata, though he was on suspension and could not work. To him, it was an awkward punishment with no responsibility but a required presence.47 Soon he got a new job. At this critical and absolutely uncertain juncture, he married Putul, whom he had grown close to at his relative’s residence. This event was not welcomed by Sircar’s family. His mother could not accept a Hindu daughterin-law; moreover, as the first engineer in their small Christian family, he had been promised marriage to an aristocratic family. Similar problems cropped up at Putul’s home. Although her mother was joyous at first, she was later distressed by her brothers’ insults.48 Sircar engaged Putul in the women’s front of the party, which he worried could not provide Putul any exciting work.49 Apart from that, they led a peaceful marital life, but financial troubles remained a constant cause of worry, leading them from one dingy residence to another.50 After two months at his new workplace, he got a job at the Jadavpur Engineering College in September 1949, and moved to a comfortable government apartment complex on C.I.T. Road, Entally (in central Calcutta).51 Kanu was freed in late 1950. Sircar wrote, ‘I came to know that they were told inside jail that a near-revolutionary change had taken place outside. So, they should also start to struggle inside. This was similar to the fraud of 9 March–climate. In the course of their movement inside the jail, Kanu and others had to endure several hunger strikes and beatings by the police.’52 Owing to increasing bitterness, his relationship with the party was loose at that time—which became another cause for his irritation.53 But his ordeal came to an end before long, helped by an accidental meeting with Thomas Sharp’s Town Planning, which would change his future. He was so fascinated by this book that he got admitted to a two-year evening postgraduate diploma course in Town and Regional Planning at B.E. College. He knew fairly well that pursuing this new academic ambition would divorce him from the political life.54 To be technically on the right side, he applied for two years’ leave of absence to the top brass of the party, but did not receive any reply, like before when he applied to the party for permission to get married.55 In his interview, Sircar explained his motivation:

For various reasons I had to quit the CPI. Actually, I lost faith in its politics. To fill up that emptiness I tried my hands at many things; theatre was one of them, though not primary but secondary for many years. I started taking town-planning classes in the evenings, which coincided with the party hours; so I left the party to pursue that course. Town planning was my first love for many years; theatre was secondary. At that stage, I did not believe that theatre could have any influence on politics, although I had a great interest in theatre from childhood. When I was not directly engaged with politics any longer, I decided to do whatever I liked in theatre.… But all these did not mean that having left the party I relinquished my political views also! The politics of the party could not be followed, but like everyone else I also have my own political beliefs. Those who want to retain this system for personal ends have their politics too; it is their politics alone. I don’t want that; I want to change.56

In the process of his separation from the CPI and eventual pursuits of theatrical movements in different parts of the country, he was guided by his ‘own politics’ outside the party—‘non-party Left’57 ideologies. Endorsing his friend Barin Saha’s words that the true communists keep away from all the communist parties, Sircar argued that communism could not be practised within the gamut of the party.58 Apparently, he left the party to pursue an academic career of his own choice and for a better livelihood, which do not seem to reflect any Marxist ideologies whatsoever—even the elements of some brilliant plays written during this period were chosen from the secluded, sombre atmosphere of a self-indulgent writer. Sircar carried on his professional, academic, and amateurish theatrical careers simultaneously amidst staggering financial crisis. He could not stick to any job for a long time, though love for and service to theatre was becoming constant. By 1952, he had fathered two children.59 In March 1953, he joined the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) as an assistant engineer at its headquarters at Maithon. Maithon was also my first experience of serious flirtation with stage plays. Actually, a drama rehearsal club, initially formed so we could spend our evenings constructively, ended up staging plays. The neighbourhood responded resoundingly. They hadn’t seen anything so professionally produced. And women actually playing female characters. Some of us engineers had managed to inspire our wives. I was shouldering the bulk of directorial functions.60

But again, he left the job and returned to Calcutta and joined the Calcutta Municipal Corporation on 2 January 1955, while continuing with his amateur

theatrical activities alongside his ‘old Entally associates’61 at the government apartment complex, with whom he had already founded the Entally Novice Artistes’ Cultural Association (ENACA). His growing passionate involvement with theatre made him not only a much sought-after performer, but also a playwright during this period. According to Sircar, Solution X (1956) was his first play, although earlier he had written a few others, such as Cinderella, Birinchibaba, and Agun, which he did not consider as significant.62 In 1956, he received a cheque of 700 rupees, accrued from the previous job with DVC, as the provident fund sum, with which he decided to go to London in 1957 to pursue a diploma course in town planning. Like many other artistically inclined Bengalis, he had wanted to travel through Europe, especially Paris, in order to savour the grandeur and beauty of the continent and the works of master painters like Van Gogh and Toulouse Lautrec—in which formal studies had no place, whereas finding a job was a necessity for his own living.63 After he realized that any dream of travel would not be financially viable, with the funds he had, he got himself admitted to the department of Town Planning at the University College London in 1957.64 Though the first few days in London were very tough for Sircar, finding a rented place and a job, and facing the initial pressure of a new curriculum, gradually, his old love for theatre began to find its feet under the protection of somewhat decent employment at an engineering company and, later, a townplanning assignment. It was in London that he saw a production of Racine’s Phèdre,65 his first experience of theatre-in-the-round, which would have a decisive role in changing his theatrical career much later in Calcutta. Compared to Calcutta, theatre in London was very costly, so he found the cheapest corners in the West End to watch John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave, Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton, and others on stage. His occasional visits to the theatres at Golders Green and the East End of London gave him a new outlook. At the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, he saw Joan Littlewood’s popular working-class agenda, and Paul Robeson at the Royal Albert Hall; he savoured Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Buster Keaton, and Charles Chaplin at the Royal Festival Hall and National Film Society.66 From a radio talk that he gave in 1967, we come to know that he also saw Jean Giraudoux’s Duel of Angels (performed by Vivien Leigh), and Jane Arden’s The Party (by Charles Laughton), but it was Brendan Behan’s revolutionary

and interventionist The Hostage at Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop that shook his previous ideas.67 Shelagh Delaney’s domestic-realistic A Taste of Honey could not impress him, but the experience of Littlewood’s documentary musical satire Oh, What a Lovely War! in 1964 stirred him once again.68 Among Roots by Arnold Wesker, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, Phèdre by Jean Racine, and Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill, the last one moved him more than the others. He did not like musical comedy, but enjoyed Peter Brook’s Irma La Douce. He had also seen My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music.69 In Prabaser Hijibiji, he has explained the crises of an individualistic urban man alone in the capital city of an imperialist country. No ideology could really help him out with regard to a lifestyle that was absolutely new and secluded from different levels of known social spaces. Such a state of isolation gives birth to urban anxieties. Perhaps that was why, sometimes, he felt that going to London was worth the effort in order to get the freedom of education, thought, and writing, and to enjoy his own ego,70 while at other times he felt that he did not like England generally; still he thought, without any conviction, he was better. An internal change might have induced him to appreciate this land, he apprehended, implying that ideally he should not have done so. Instead, he prayed for the lost childhood pleasures that helped him overcome the weekly monotony.71 In April 1959, he started writing his second play, Bara Pisima (Elder Paternal Aunt), based on the problems of featuring actresses in a play, which he had personally faced at Maithon, while working for the DVC.72 Immediately after finishing the course, Sircar returned in 1959, rejoining his old office at Calcutta Municipal Corporation as deputy chief valuer and surveyor, but only after five months’ ‘idleness’.73 Apart from a slight raise in salary, there was nothing significant professionally, but his personal life was different altogether. In association with a few friends, he founded Chakra, a cultural group, which used to meet every Saturday to discuss anything to the speakers’ liking.74 It was quite impossible that theatre would not be practised by this group when Sircar was one of the founders. Initially, they enacted plays in a rented hall of the All Bengal Teachers’ Association (ABTA) by raising money from voluntary sources and issuing invitation cards; tickets were not sold. Bara Pisima was the first play to be staged on 11 September 1960. Fun fairs and exhibition shows for kids of kindergarten schools and

slums were also organized on Sircar’s initiative.75 After Bara Pisima (other plays not written by him were also performed), at Sircar’s insistence, Chakra decided to hold a theatre festival of four plays at the ABTA hall: Bara Pisima on 18 March 1961; Sanibar (Saturday) and Solution X on 1 April; and Thana Theke Aschi [Coming from the Police Station] on 15 April).76 In August, the group was invited for the first time by the railway workers to stage two plays of Sircar, Bara Pisima and Solution X, at Sitarampur; followed by an invitation from Maithon to produce Ram Shyam Jadu and Solution X in March 1962.77 The group even started making appearances on public stages in Calcutta.78 During this time, Sircar tried his hand at his only crime drama Samabritta (Encirclement).79 Amidst such developments came a remarkable moment in the history of Indian theatre: Ebong Indrajit (And Indrajit) was born in 1963. Sircar read it out at Chakra many times. At one such reading session, the young critic Samik Bandyopadhyay was present, who later took the initiative to publish the play in Bahurupi, a prestigious theatre journal brought out by Sombhu Mitra’s Bohurupee, the theatre group of the same name that had by then become famous nationally. Neither his job nor the cultural enterprises could stop the ardent town planner from seeking a French scholarship to gain practical training in town planning. In July 1963, Sircar finally got the opportunity to go to France, for a nine-month training course. At Besançon, where Sircar had been taking French classes, a prolific phase of playwriting followed—Sararattir (The Whole Night) was written in September, followed by Ballabhpurer Rupkatha (The Fairy Tale of Ballabhpur), which was finished on 29 October. December saw the birth of Kabi-kahini (The Story of a Poet). During the training period in Paris, he completed Bichitranushthan (Variegated Programmes) and translated Sararattir into English.80 About his French sojourn, Sircar said: In France, my mind was made up that theatre would be an essential part of my personality. I would devote my energies totally to theatre when I returned to Calcutta. Although a strong attachment with my profession lingered. Remembering my five jobless months after the London trip, I decided to stretch my work plans abroad and save money. To allow for my devotion to theatre in the future, even if it meant quitting my job.81

The impact that theatre-in-the-round had on Sircar in London was intensified in France. In a letter to Anjali Basu, his childhood friend, he wrote about the experience of Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial in

the Théatre en Rond de Paris.82 He also saw Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna and The Lesson at Théâtre de la Huchette.83 With the four new plays and a new job in Enugu, east Nigeria (which he had acquired in France), Sircar returned to Calcutta in March 1964. Again, there started the reading sessions at Chakra, where he read out Kabi-kahini and Ballabhpurer Rupkatha. Sararattir and Bichitranushthan were disseminated to a group of very close friends. Kabi-kahini was even staged at the historic Minerva Theatre on 1 June,84 prior to his journey to Enugu in July 1964. The first few months were spent acclimatizing to this new land and settling down there with his family. Baki Itihas (The Remaining History)85 was completed after a few months of his father’s death on 3 May 1965.86 On his return to Calcutta on leave, Sircar came to know that a young group called Shouvanik had been performing his Ebong Indrajit in their open-air theatre, Muktangan, though their production could not please him. Bohurupee signed an agreement with Sircar to get the exclusive rights to perform Baki Itihas, Sararattir, Bagh (Tiger), and Ram Shyam Jadu, and proposed to accept Ebong Indrajit as well if he took steps to stop Shouvanik from its further performances. Sircar rejected this proposal.87 As none of the contemporary leading personalities of Bohurupee is alive, this claim could not be verified. His literary career sprang up all of a sudden after he returned to Nigeria, where, meanwhile, a military insurgency had taken place. However, for Sircar, it was the most successful period in his writing career.88 Pare Konodin (Some Day Later), Jadi Ar Ekbar (If Only Once More), Pralap (Delirium), and Tringsa Satabdi (Thirtieth Century) came out like streams from a fountain of ideas. His Nigerian experiences helped him understand the nature of the village community spread all over the country, where, except for a few urban spaces, the land belonged to the village, not the individual. He saw how one ‘heavyweight, expert’ American town planner, overruling the old and experienced British provincial secretary’s interdiction, wanted to bring on competition among the natives by dismantling this age-old tradition and encouraging private property. He also felt how the Peace Corps working in continents like Asia and Africa fell prey to American imperialism against their own knowledge.89 During his stay in Nigeria, his theatrical experience was limited to seeing a few productions of Wole Soyinka. He was impressed by the indigenous form of dance,90 and theatre containing rhythm and

vibrancy.91 But before he could gather much about this unique land, civil war broke out. As the political crisis deepened, Sircar sent his wife and two children to Calcutta, only to follow them on 5 June 1967.92 Bibar (The Cave) and Pagla Ghora (The Wild Horse) were his last two creations in Nigeria.93 On his return, Chakra reassembled; Sircar read six plays written in Nigeria and lectured on Nigerian politics to the members. He saw the production of Baki Itihas by Bohurupee, which disappointed him.94 However, he found himself in a dilemma whether to join Bohurupee as a learner, having postponed the idea of forming his own group that he had nurtured in France and Nigeria. It was clear that much was to be learnt from Sombhu Mitra (the acclaimed director of Bohurupee), and as a playwright, he was sure of supplying them with new plays, but what he perceived as discrimination commonly practised in the group that had been experienced by his sister-inlaw, already a member, made him pause.95 Again, such personal claims of Sircar would remain unsubstantiated in the absence of the contemporary group members, who could have enlightened us with their views. However, as it so happened, during this period, Mitra went abroad and Sircar was invited by Bohurupee to direct his own play Pralap. Sircar readily accepted the proposal as an opportunity to test the working environment. He was impressed with the group’s punctuality and industry.96 He benefited much during his stay that helped him later, but the work experience also made him realize that joining the group would be impossible; his own group had to be formed. As Himangsu Chattopadhyay of Bohurupee also joined Sircar in his new venture, Bohurupee produced Pralap only once in front of a few invited viewers, though by selling tickets.97 Before moving on to the history of the formation of Satabdi, I would like to provide an overview of Bohurupee’s contribution to projecting Sircar’s plays and thus disseminating his work as a dramatist. In spite of being one of the most prominent theatre groups in Calcutta, Bohurupee lacked original, quality plays. Sircar appeared at this critical moment, and Mitra did not fail to notice the sheen of this new ‘product’. That Sircar came to prominence by their productions is as true as the fact that Bohurupee was benefited by them in return. Before and after Bohurupee’s productions, other groups put on Sircar’s plays as well, but they were not as cutting-edge as Bohurupee, nor did they cater consistently over a considerable period of time to different parts of the country as did Bohurupee. Historically, Bohurupee’s contribution

to the making of Sircar cannot be ignored. Their production of Baki Itihas (premiered on 7 May 1967 at the New Empire) drew rave reviews in newspapers. Kironmoy Raha wrote the following in the Hindustan Times: To transform this play to inaction into an absorbing production of excitement and emotion is a challenging task. Sambhu Mitra’s directorial imagination was fully evident in the way he was able to vary the mode and pitch of the three acts where the three different couples play out their roles and yet bind them together in a unity of identity.98

Amrita Bazar Patrika reported, ‘Bohurupee’s production of “Baki Itihash” is one more effulgent example of their highly intelligent and deeply imaginative productional elegance stamped with a grade showmanship.’99 However, though nearly all theatre critics were full of praise, Sircar was critical of Sombhu Mitra: Sombhu Mitra is a great director and a great director has to—sometimes—reinterpret the play. That’s one thing. But sometimes it becomes an obsession. [The director feels] if I don’t change something, then I become a lesser director. I mean, then it becomes changing it for the sake of changing.… [I]t changes the entire meaning of the play. But that also has a stunt value, with the same actor doing Saradindu and Sitanath, and the same actress doing Basanti and Kana. But that does not remain my play any more.… I had a talk with Tripti Mitra … I openly criticised [the production].100

Within months of the production of Baki Itihas, Pralap premiered on 3 October 1967. Tringsa Satabdi, Bohurupee’s next Sircar-play (which premiered on 22 June 1969), was welcomed by the critics. About Pagla Ghora (which premiered on 28 February 1971), The Statesman wrote, ‘Mr Mitra has taken a lot of liberties with the play. Even a mild joke about “Bengali unity” is reinforced with the song. “Ek Sutrey Bandhiachhi”, lest the audience fail to notice the point. Mr Mitra has also made vital changes in characterization.’101 After Bagh (which premiered on 11 November 1975), Bohurupee staged Jadi Ar Ekbar (which premiered on 26 February 1976), about which Samik Bandyopadhyay wrote in The Economic Times: Bohurupee goes all out to get belly-laughs out of Badal Sircar’s Jadi Aar Ekbaar (A Second [C]hance), a modern fantasy in verse modelled on J. M. Barrie’s good old Dear Brutus.… Director Tripti Mitra did not trust the play enough. The wry cynicism of the text gets almost lost in the straining after effects, with the cardboard moon, the bamboostrip sun, the dancing god and his dancing band.… Stage fantasy requires a treatment different from that

demanded by stage magic, a distinction that director Tripti Mitra and her associates did not remember.102

Therefore, even though reviews were not unanimously positive, Bohurupee gave Sircar’s plays wide exposure. In all, Bohurupee produced six of Sircar’s plays. Satabdi was formed in 1967. Sircar wrote that there was no formal date of its inception. Nevertheless, 29 August, his wedding anniversary, was decided as Satabdi’s foundation day,103 and after the selection of cast and crew, they decided to produce Kabi-kahini. Its first show was held at Farakka (Maldaha) on 23 January 1968, followed by the second invitation from Durgapur; performances in Calcutta started from 3 March. Bagh and Bichitranushthan were staged successively. In all, 35 shows of Kabi-kahini and 8 shows of Bagh and Bichitranushthan were staged.104 That year, the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award was conferred on Sircar for Ebong Indrajit, the ceremony for which took place in 1969. Soon after, Sircar closed Satabdi out of apathy and exasperation.105 Samik Bandyopadhyay, who was also a member of Satabdi, revealed that according to the terms and conditions of membership, a certain number of productions had to be put on every year. For want of quality plays and acting, the number of spectators started dwindling. Moreover, some of the members, including actors, left for other groups. Simultaneously, Sircar’s attraction for an alternative form led to the closure of Satabdi.106 Nevertheless, some stayed back to implore him to return to theatre. Sircar was unyielding, but eventually agreed to continue with a study circle on theatre at their insistence. Slowly but surely, he came round to the repeated requests of these tenacious members and gave the nod to rehearsals for Pralap, which was staged on his return from a cultural exchange tour.107 This period, as we have seen, bears little evidence that may prove Sircar’s preoccupation with the studies of political discourses, after coming out of the party politics. There is no evidence of his pursuit of cultural studies, or folk literary traditions either. In fact, he clearly stated to Samik Bandyopadhyay that he was not at all ‘conscious’ of the changes that theatre in England had been undergoing (in the 1950s) during his stay there.108 We do not see him develop contact with the common people in this period either, though, it must be agreed, his activities remained progressive compared to many Bengali middle-class intellectuals (especially, non-resident Indians frequenting in and

out of the country). These issues become more important in the course of analysis because of his (i) blanket criticisms of the folk literature as ‘reactionary’,109 (ii) claims of incorporating features of folk performances in his theatre, and (iii) ‘honest approach’ of the Third Theatre.110 These claims, which are also related to this period of Sircar’s life, are not as reliable as they seem to be. Besides, it would be interesting to see that some incidents and practices of this period—for example, his party leader’s advice to attack the workers on 8 March 1949; his going abroad; theatre activities with Chakra; etc.—would reappear in different forms and in different context at a later stage of Sircar’s theatre activities. In order to understand the contradictions of Sircar, and therefore those of the Third Theatre, the process of disentanglement would continue in the following chapters. I continue with the evolution of Satabdi in Chapter Four, but before that, in the next chapter, let us turn to the plays written in this period.

Three UNTIMELY PLAY-ING WITH LIGHTS, SOUND, STAGE, AND ACTION

On Trial. Pankaj Munshi and Badal Sircar in Sesh Nei. Production: Satabdi, n.d.; direction: Badal Sircar. Source: A former theatre worker.

… Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither having th’accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.1

It is perhaps evident from the title that this chapter will deal with Sircar’s early proscenium plays (briefly mentioned in the previous chapter) in the context of the political history of West Bengal, although there is little politics in them. It is noteworthy that many of his plays written in this genre pivot around relationships between men and women, typical of the urban middleclass society; some are good examples of Bengali comedy, some are sentimental criticism, and some stirred the theatrical consciousness of the entire nation. But seldom do they touch upon the complexities of a classridden society struggling to survive in the post-Independence age. The reason may be that many of these plays, on Bengali sentiments, ideals, and dreams, were written abroad, based on the writer’s personal experience. Interestingly, quite a few of them were inspired by cinematic plots, another index of where Sircar’s early dramatic imagination lay. The year Sircar wrote his first play, Solution X (1956; it first appeared in a periodical titled Khapchhara in 1957), was an important one for West Bengal. After nine years of Independence, almost everything was in shambles. All commitments and assurances seemed to have disappeared in the steep price rise, inflation, lay-offs, and growing rift between the haves and the have-nots. Land reform came to a halt, poor lessees were being evicted, mass-education policy and public health-care system were in a neglected state, rates of unemployment were on the rise, food shortage was increasing, the pressure of tax imposition was enormous, the refugee problem was either overlooked or mishandled, and protestors were subjected to police atrocities whenever they took to the streets. In the general election of 1957, the ruling INC secured absolute majority in the West Bengal State Assembly; though on account of organizational and other issues the Left Front could not form an alternative, it did not fail to record some progress. The Bengal front’s failure was soothed by the success of the communists in Kerala. Nationally, the Left Front secured almost double the vote share against that in 1951.

Meanwhile, the price of common articles had started rising again. Hunger spread in many districts of West Bengal. The streets of Calcutta were thronged with people from the villages of these districts in search of food. Apart from West Bengal, a state of famine spread in states like Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan. Poor farmers, and agricultural, factory, cottage industry, and other workers, primarily of the unorganized sector, suffered from the excessive price rise, which was a fall out of the central government’s anti-people policies. The refugee problem of West Bengal became as complicated as the food crisis all over India. Many refugees had to live through starvation and malnutrition, and faced untimely death due to the callousness of state and central governments. From these millions emerged a section of displaced people who later inhabited the colony areas in the lowlands around Calcutta and other parts of West Bengal, especially the northern part of the state. But the state government refused to accept their right on these lands; instead, it resolved to pack these wretched people off to Dandakaranya—a place at the trijunction of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh, selected by the central government for the Bengal refugees. Sircar wrote his first play during this period; he also began work on several others the same year, that is, in 1956. But what do we find in the foreword to Solution X? Sircar wrote, ‘Having seen a foreign film I wrote the play impulsively. I had seen the film only once. Moreover, I could not understand the dialogues in English, which is why I could not copy as much as I wanted to; so the structure was changed.’2 In Purano Kasundi, his autobiography, Sircar wrote that as his office was in the central Esplanade area in Calcutta with plenty of movie halls, he would often frequent these after office hours. It was here that he watched Howard Hawks’s Hollywood film Monkey Business, the dialogues of which remained incomprehensible, although he understood the plot. In order to justify his tendency towards adaptation, he argued, ‘The propensity to invent wonderful games, or collect and adapt from foreign books started from childhood, which continued almost throughout my life’.3 A shift in his objectives of translation surfaced later, which was fashioned more for ‘ideological’ than habitual reasons. Solution X is a comedy where suppressed human emotions surface by virtue of a fictitious chemical compound. Sambhunath Sengupta is a scientist, Anima is his wife, and Tutul, their only daughter. Sambhunath has been

researching on Solution X. On the day of the scene, Sambhunath is at his research when little Tutul catches hold of a beaker full of Solution X and Gland Extract out of inquisitiveness. Suddenly, her father appears and warns her against any mischief. Startled, Tutul drops the beaker in a drinking water tank. Eventually, Sambhunath and Anima both drink water from this tank and start behaving in a manner unbecoming of their age and social status, only to return to reality after a deep sleep of a few hours. The play ends when, after drinking from the tank, Dr Khastagir, the director of the institute where Sambhunath works; Bela, Sambhunath’s colleague Somen Chatterjee’s wife; and Gita, Anima’s sister-in-law, start shouting and dancing in a frenzy. It seems that the writer did not want to arrive at any solution at all through his Solution X. For the time being, trance, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,4 liberated the suppressed psyches of those middle-class characters tied down to societal norms and familial duties.5 Noticeably, on several occasions, in order to instruct or introduce something, the playwright intervenes in the text. For example, in the first scene, he concludes the opening stage directions with ‘Telephone is ringing. Sambhunath enters hurriedly and receives the call. He is in dhoti, spectacles, and half-worn vest. As if preparing to go out, but his whole attention is on this phone.’6 It is difficult to understand how wearing ‘dhoti, spectacles and half-worn vest’ is construed as ‘preparing to go out’. How would it be realized where someone was paying attention to without watching or mentioning his body movement? It is interesting that the writer is already visualizing the theatrical dimension of his script, though he had barely entered the world of theatre at this time. The author’s intervention can be witnessed in subsequent scripts as well. Perhaps we can explain this kind of impingement, in a broader sense, with the help of Bakhtin’s exposition of heteroglossia: For the prose writer, the object is a focal point for heteroglot voices among which his own voice must also sound; these voices create the background necessary for his own voice, outside of which his artistic prose nuances cannot be perceived, and without which they ‘do not sound.’ … The dialogic orientation of discourse is a phenomenon that is, of course, a property of any discourse. It is the natural orientation of any living discourse.7

Bara Pisima (1959) was his next play, written in London. In the playwright’s note,8 Sircar wrote that the play was penned in mid-1959, but on the next page the year was written as 1958. The confusion created by Sircar is

beyond any possibility of verification now. The problems in making women act during his Maithon days, and the difficulties of theatre production in general, induced him to write9 ‘the first, full-length original play’ of his career.10 The set was an imitation of the layout of the government residential apartment at Entally where he had moved in late 1949.11 The play is a comedy about staging a production by a group of enthusiasts who have enough time at their disposal for such amateur leisure-time exercise. The characters belong to the well-off class in a housing complex in central Calcutta. Their planning, confusions, and success are the central idea, though there is also reference to a developing relationship. The problem arises when the elder paternal aunt or Bara Pisima of Anu, the female protagonist, arrives on the scene just a day before the premiere of the play. Bara Pisima does not like the idea of women, especially Anu, taking part with young men in a stage performance in front of a large gathering.12 Apart from the situational comedy, what interests us is the fact that female participation in the public space was still looked down upon even in the progressive, educated section of Calcutta at that time. In order to draw a network of incidents, Sircar introduces the rehearsal scene in the very beginning; the strategies for a successful performance constitute the play within the play (which is also admitted by one of the characters).13 Sircar’s playful interest in metatheatre, which often recurs in his later work, becomes evident at an early date. The examples of the author’s intrusion in the text are as follows: after the play begins, the dramatist says, among other things, ‘It is not difficult to recognize the young man on the stool, with a book in his hands, as Smarak’.14 Without introducing the character earlier, the playwright implies that he would be recognized automatically. A little later, he says, ‘One thing must be told here. Rajiv, Dhruvesh, Shashanka, and Banani certainly have names given by their parents, which are often revealed out of necessity’. Sircar goes on to narrate the uselessness of invoking those names.15 Immediately after this narration, the dialogue of Nitai ends with the playwright’s statement: ‘Last word more sweetly—bearing the pain of many past rehearsals.’16 Such a comment is fine with the reader, but for the spectator, it is rather useless. There are plenty of similar examples in the play. Sanibar is Sircar’s third play, written after he returned to Calcutta from London in October 1959.17 Critics have pointed out, as Sircar claimed, that it was written under the influence of James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter

Mitty, but, according to the playwright, he had not read the story till then. He thought that daydreaming was a known matter; more than one composition on such a theme was not unusual.18 This short comedy starts on a pleasant Saturday with a mother pleading with her children and husband to take their food. In the meantime, Dibyendu, one of her sons, returns from office. After the passage of a few minutes, Dibyendu falls into a reverie of winning handsome prize money from a crossword competition and a probable promotion in his career. Suddenly, Dibyendu returns to reality by the interruption of his sister, only to start dreaming about her friend Sagarika. In the next phase of dreaming, he loses his job and starts thinking of starting a business with the winning amount from the crossword competition, and in the final phase he shoots at his boss Mr Basu, who gives the verdict of Dibyendu’s capital punishment for killing him. Eventually, in reality, an employee comes from his office and relieves Dibyendu; he is not required in the office the next day. The whole sequence of daydreaming started from this point, apparently his discontent at the order for compulsory attendance on the next day, a Sunday—which turned into different aspects of unemployment (threat of losing his job, humiliation by the boss, inhuman work pressure), love, entrepreneurship, murder as emancipation, and punishment as martyrdom,19 putting a middle-aged, middle-class man like Dibyendu in states of hallucination.20 Later, in a diary entry dated 21 November 1963, Sircar expressed the idea that Dibyendu should be subjected to the audience’s mockery because man, in general, was a laughing stock.21 Interestingly, in the beginning, while describing the room where the plot is set, Sircar’s literary intervention is manifest: ‘Over all, it is a middle-class family living room, which is used for internal purposes as well.’22 Sanibar and Bara Pisima were written in an eventful year in West Bengal; though the conditions are very Bengali, reality is remote to these drawingroom dramas. Food crisis became so critical at this point that Bengal was brought face to face with an unprecedented mass movement against inert government steps to fight black marketing and a famine-like situation. In response, the government resorted to gagging the protestors and agitators by the repressive state machinery. Within a span of nearly 8 months, as many as 80 people fell prey to police bullets, hundreds went missing, many were injured, and thousands were arrested. It was in this same year that a duly elected state government was removed from office in Kerala by the central government and President’s Rule was imposed, for which no justifiable

explanation was produced. The border issues also started souring the SinoIndian relationship late in 1959. There is not even the faintest glimpse of these critical issues in Sircar’s plays of this period. From Dibyendu’s dream, we only perceive that he is exasperated with his boss, somewhat worried about his job, and even contemplating starting a new business. However, Sanibar brings up Sircar’s first use of the dramatic device of fantasies and dreams, which he resorts to several times in his later plays. Sircar started Ram Shyam Jadu in 1957 and finished it in 1961. Here again he drew the story from the 1955 Hollywood film We’re No Angels.23 Ram, Shyam, and Jadu are prison escapees, who come to a small place called Kaliganj to try their luck—with the intention of cheating their way into the houses of unknown people and robbing them either by stealth or by murder. Incidentally, they reach the home of one Bhabani Chaudhuri, who had been cheated out of his property by Sukdeb Ray. Sukdeb, in spite of being raised by Bhabani’s father, had usurped Bhabani’s property and made him the manager. As the play progresses, the three ‘criminals’ start helping Bhabani out when they actually wanted to do the opposite. At the end, they rescue Bhabani from the distressful situation and leave without causing any harm. Virtually echoing Foucault’s theories on criminality,24 the play significantly questions the common beliefs of criminality and punishment, and clearly looks ahead to such minor masterpieces as Hattamalar Opare (Beyond the Land of Hattamala). In spite of the storyline being far stronger than that of Bara Pisima, Sircar thought, ‘[T]he characters might have overstepped normality to a certain degree. If that is the case (don’t know whether that is so), Samabritta, Solution X, Ballabhpurer Rupkatha would be considered as even worse. Each of them starts from a known story … leading to inappropriate development of characters.’25 Suspense and crime constitute his next play, Samabritta (1961).26 As in Solution X and Ballabhpurer Rupkatha, the plot was developed from an English film, The Scapegoat (1959), based on the novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier,27 which the playwright was barely able to comprehend.28 The play is about the appropriation of property by illegal means. Being penniless, the lecherous zamindar of Mohitpur, Sujit BasuMallick, decides to murder his wife Malavika, who has a fortune in her name and was unwilling to share this with Sujit. On finding Prabir Guha, his lookalike, Sujit conspires to send Prabir to his house. Unaware of a

dangerous plot, Prabir accepts his new identity of Sujit after much resistance, only to realize gradually his plight. Finally, Malavika is killed by Sujit, who in turn is stabbed by Prabir. The police are clueless about the murderers, and Prabir—a homeless man—finds refuge in the zamindari of Mohitpur. The play works like any crime thriller or detective story, with one significant aspect: Prabir’s search for a home, which would become one of the important issues in Sircar’s subsequent dramatic works. The appearance of Ebong Indrajit (1963; first published in 1965) marked a new era in the history of Indian drama. Suddenly, the typical, prosaic everyday life of Amal, Bimal, Kamal, ebong (and) Indrajit raised the benchmark of a modestly ‘copybook’ proscenium theatrical practice. The play expounds practically nothing. The nothingness in the course of an average lifestyle is the leitmotif. The very names—Amal, Bimal, Kamal—are rhyming, repetitive, internally alliterative, and suggestive of a circular life, whereas Indrajit is a ‘prototype’29 representing a struggling human being in search of a different life. The plot is further consolidated by the fluid structure whereby the place, time, and actors are delivered from the singleness of identity. This fluidity, or the state of flux, brings drama and dynamism in—to quote from Ebong Indrajit—an absolutely non-dramatic plot,30 which emanated from Sircar’s experience of an isolated life in London.31 The poems and personal diary of an untidy life shaped a definite structure of drama: Till now, I could gather an idea that I could write plays. But the idea seemed so improbable that I could not start writing one. At last, after long reflection, I started; imported a writer who was trying to write a play on a non-dramatic plot and failing just like me. The writer invites four spectators from the audience. This much was written in about four loose sheets and then they became permanent residents of my office bag. … I kept writing without much planning—ran through the poems and the diary written in London—as if reaching from one poem to the other, filling the gap with dialogues…. It was completed within seven or eight nights and later read out to friends, though I never thought about producing it on stage because it was more like a personal diary than a play.32

A number of critics have created a space for debate by pointing to the influence of the theatre of the absurd and/or existentialism on Ebong Indrajit, but neither his personal life nor the play, which is a documentation of his desire, anger, despair, and dream, seemed to have elements of both of them to intellectuals like Samik Bandyopadhyay and Pratibha Agrawal,33 who knew

him closely. Sircar himself would argue that the play ‘is a bit of personal memoir, not intended to be written as a play, a performable one’.34 Ebong Indrajit was not written for production as was generally done with other plays. He just wanted to put down some of his feelings. As he had succeeded only in the art of playwriting, the expression took the form of a play.35 That was why he did not want to put this accidental creation in the category of theatre of the absurd. In defence of his argument, Sircar put forth his ignorance of the theatre of the absurd at the time of writing the play. Later, an article on the influence of some eight playwrights on Sircar caught his attention. Of the eight dramatists mentioned, he had only heard about two, and read only one play by one of them. This ‘ignorance’ led him into reading Martin Esslin’s Theatre of the Absurd.36 He elaborated on the matter in this manner: Actually, I am not primarily a playwright. Primarily I am a theatre man. I started with acting, then did directing, then I wanted plays to produce. That is why I dabbled in writing. In the beginning, I wrote some comedies, but then you gradually learn the ropes. I could never write anything else, like short stories or novels. So whatever was inside came out in the form of Ebong Indrajit. That also I did not begin as a play. I wrote a few pages and was sure that it was not going to be any play. It used to be in my office bag … four or five sheets … and then one day a friend of mine came to my office when I was in somebody else’s office. He was waiting and wanted some reading material. He found my file under the telephone directory, and being a close friend, he took the liberty of taking the sheets out of my file and started reading them. When I came back I snatched it from his hands and said: who gave you permission? He very gravely said: Please finish it. That very night I started work on it … and finished it in, I think, six or seven continuous nights.… I took it to be a private piece of writing. I never thought of publishing it. It got published only because of Samik Bandyopadhyay. I read it at a friend’s place [elsewhere he mentions Chakra] and he happened to be present.… He told my friend that he wanted to have this play published in Bohurupee. Although I was in theatre at the time, I never thought of doing Ebong Indrajit because I thought it was a private piece of writing. It is not a play … not a play to be produced. That is what I thought, and if Samik did not insist, probably for years it would have been in my drawer. But then it became public property. There hasn’t been a single important Bengali production of this play, although through the staging of this play in Bengali I became a playwright, as Karanth said he became a national director with his production of this play. … I never planned Ebong Indrajit. It was written when I was in London for two years— very poor, very lonely, very bored. So I used to write poems. I am no poet, but I just wrote some poems. They are not love poems, nor poems on nature … but around my thinking, when one is away, in space and time, both, away for two years. I would never have written those poems had I not been away from Calcutta. Ebong Indrajit was written from poem to

poem. The poems were written between 1957 and 1959. In 1959 I came back to Calcutta, and Ebong Indrajit was written in 1963. I actually sat with copies of those poems and I would write a little bit and then add a poem. Then I would identify the poem to reach through the dialogue serving as a transition from one poem to the next. That is how it was written. I didn’t know where it was going to end. Obviously, Camus. Now, I never can understand books on philosophy … Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus. I could never finish … I read part of it. Something affected me, moved me very much. Something somehow matched my experience. But I could not continue because it was too difficult for me. Then I read his novel The Plague and I thought now I don’t have to read The Myth of Sisyphus, the rest of it. I’ve got my answer.…37

This statement is incomplete without some of his letters and comments in Prabaser Hijibiji where we see that he had already read a few plays by Sartre, O’Neill, and Jean Cocteau,38 and other works by Thomas Wolfe,39 André Gide, and The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann,40 which may have left an impression on Sircar, leading to shape Ebong Indrajit. But despite social hostility, deprivation, acridity in life, and acceptance of defeat, not only Indrajit, but also the other protagonists in almost all other plays of this period ‘continue to live with a purpose—although without any illusion’.41 It is desire that drives a man, and hope that sustains him. Desire is the motive force, hope is the stabilising element. Desire raises questions, goads him from one place to another, makes him angry, restless, forever searching and questing, forever discontented and wanting more. Hope makes him carry on, from one question to another, without ever finding an adequate answer. Desire is strength, hope is peace. Desire is life, hope is living, Desire is death, hope hope [sic] is denial of death. And Desire plus Hope is Man. MAN That deadly enemy of Nature. Never really believing in God and ‘the other life’, never submitting to ‘supernatural forces’, always relying upon his own limited strength, own limited span of life, refusing to die, refusing to accept death as the carrier to the ‘eternal life’, clinging to this short, petty, sordid life for all it is worth. Man the eternal fighter. With two weapons. Desire and Hope.42

and Camus said—this hope is illogical. True living can only begin by the rejection of hope and acceptance of absurd existence. I have not yet acquired Brahmajnan [knowledge of Brahman, or the supreme God in Indian philosophy] like Camus, that is why I look forward to the future with illogical, unyielding hope even today as many others. That gives a feeling

—I am living; living is necessary, and—who might say?—perhaps good, too.43

This ‘hope’ works as a backdrop of his plays, and it becomes untenable to relate existentialism and/or theatre of the absurd to Sircar’s very own experience or its documentation. On 15 March 1971, in Samiksha-1 he wrote, ‘A new term called Theatre of the Absurd is in vogue in English. Not new anymore, a few years older now. It is used in our country as well.… I did not understand what it was, but when a few plays of mine were marked with this stamp, I was compelled to understand it.’44 In view of such a complete rejection of ‘absurdism’ and the belief in ‘desire’ and ‘hope’, we have to start our assessment from the face value of the play. At the outset, its content—the conflict and despair of an individual —attracts us, and seems to compel us to compare it with its Western counterparts. We may even be tempted to apply Sartre’s opinion of the Absurdists to Ebong Indrajit, that it is nothing but bourgeois drama. In an interview, Sartre is noted to have said, [The plays of Beckett, Ionesco, and Adamov are] profoundly, essentially, bourgeois in content. Take Beckett. I liked Waiting for Godot very much. I go so far as to regard it as the best thing that has been done in the theater for thirty years. But all the themes in Godot are bourgeois—solitude, despair, the platitude, incommunicability. All of them are the product of the inner solitude of the bourgeoisie. And it matters little what Godot may be— God or the Revolution…. What counts is that Godot does not come because of the heroes’ inner weakness; that he cannot come because of their ‘sin,’ because men are like that.45

While making such a comment, perhaps Sartre disregarded the fact that everyone who is a part of bourgeois culture or society is bound to acquire some of its characteristics, knowingly or unknowingly. Sometimes the proletarian culture is adopted or adapted by the bourgeoisie in such a manner that it no longer remains proletarian, and seems it was never so. Falling prey to such a politics does not make one’s emotions less important or less sincere. Theoretically, Godot or Indrajit may be termed ‘bourgeois’, but essentially they are far more proletarian than Sartre’s own Antoine Roquentin.46 But I do agree with Sartre’s argument that Ionesco, Beckett, Adamov, Genet (and for us, Sircar) had been ‘absurd’ly called the ‘writers of the “theater of the absurd”’, because none of them regards human life and the world as an absurdity. Genet certainly does not; he studies the relation between images and mirages; nor Adamov, who is a

Marxist and has written, ‘No theatre without ideology’; nor even Beckett…. What they in fact represent either through their inner conflicts or through their contrast with each other is a flare-up of the contradictions which are the very basis of dramatic art. For there is no art which is not a ‘qualitative unit’ of contradictions.47

Keeping this statement in mind, if we also consider Sircar’s adherence to Marxist principles, and later, to the idea of theatre for social change (in the line of Marxist ideology), there really is no ground to hold plays like Ebong Indrajit and Baki Itihas as products of theatre of the absurd. In fact, none of his plays, as I have mentioned, belongs to this category. Citing Prabaser Hijibiji, in the previous chapter, I have mentioned Sircar’s thought of urban anxieties in a state of seclusion. His mental condition reflected in some of the characters of the plays of this phase can be defined broadly with the theory of ‘alienation’, which ultimately leads to human ‘abstraction’—‘denuded of all human characteristics’.48 Though a few traits of alienation are discernible in these characters, they never culminate in succeeding ‘abstraction’. From the beginning, the characters are not directed towards the psychological bareness. Ebong Indrajit is significant in more ways than one: immediately after the play begins, the writer—who, according to Sircar’s above statement,49 is his alter ego (similarly, in The Changing Language of Theatre, Sircar has said that the character of the writer is ‘a kind of alter-ego of Indrajit’,50 which also suggests clearly that Indrajit is Sircar himself)—says: I’ve written plays. Many plays. I want to write plays. More plays. I do not know about the exploited common people. Don’t know the slave in the coal mine. Don’t know the farmer of the paddy field. Snake charmer gypsies, Santhal leader, the group of fish hunters in the large river are strangers to me. I see those around who are formless, colourless, substanceless. They are non-dramatic. They are—Amal, Bimal, Kamal. And Indrajit.51

The soliloquy is in fact a confession on the actual playwright’s part and reminiscent of what he admitted in The Changing Language of Theatre. Thoroughly an urban man, even in his political career, Sircar was a reader and producer of the dreams and nightmares of individuals like him: ‘urban middle class people—a minority in the society no doubt, but an important minority, and moreover they are people he knows intimately’.52 On account of non-dramatic qualities of the representatives of this class, he had to get rid of a definite story in Ebong Indrajit. ‘As a story would be too specific to project the universal nature of the problems, he [the

playwright, here, Sircar] uses a cycle of typical events in their life instead— examination, interview, marriage, career.’53 But why not their social existence in the context of complex political developments? Why are Mashima (maternal aunt) and Manashi portrayed as somewhat confused and dominated characters? Although there are plenty of examples, I would like to cite three instances: (i) ‘It is the quality of all Mashimas not to understand anything’; (ii) ‘Manashi: Don’t know. I don’t know. I am stupid. I know nothing, only believe’; and (iii) ‘Manashi: I can’t understand what you are saying.’54 In spite of these unresolved questions, one cannot deny that the ‘prototypes’ by virtue of colourless ‘examination, interview, marriage, career’, as professed by Sircar, constitute a seamless flow of consciousness, overlapping every single action and character (or ‘prototype’). In that sense, Ebong Indrajit can very well qualify as an entry point from proscenium drama to anganmancha, which can be translated as theatre-in-the-round. In other words, it stands on that threshold which denotes the beginning of a difference in Sircar’s theatre thinking. It surprises us that through the writer of Ebong Indrajit, Sircar expresses his own quest for a stage vocabulary and his inability of expression, while actually this helplessness becomes his most powerful proscenium discourse, anticipating the advent of a revolutionary medium in Indian theatre. Ironically, his group Satabdi produced this path-breaking play only twice: on 30 October 1972 in Manipur, at the request of the Manipur Sangeet Natak Akademi, and next on 17 December 1972 in anganmancha in Calcutta.55 Sircar did not clarify the reason for keeping it aside, but never disowned Ebong Indrajit and similar plays of this phase as his own. I have never rejected Ebong Indrajit. It only proves the power of the Press…. I have never ever rejected my old plays and certainly not Ebong Indrajit…. I guess someone had asked a question. I was working in the Third Theatre. I must have said that our group will not do Ebong Indrajit or such plays now. That is not our priority. That doesn’t mean that as a playwright I rejected Ebong Indrajit or Baki Itihas or Sara Raattir.56… I never disowned it [Ebong Indrajit]. I couldn’t. But I still say that our group will not do it even now, because that is not our priority. We are doing other kinds of plays. Maybe a day will come when our group will do this play. I am hoping for that day, but not now.57

The reason for not performing such a pioneering work might have been its thematic structure, which puts forward the suffering, inner conflict of an individual as the central idea when Satabdi was practising Third Theatre, but

the reason for not staging it in Satabdi’s early years is not known—given that Sircar was unhappy with the Shouvanik production. After the experience of Ebong Indrajit, one would expect something of the same stature, but that did not happen. Sararattir (September 1963) was written in Besançon, France. This somewhat mystifying psychological drama is about a married couple, who go to a small town of Bengal on a vacation, where on a rainy evening they get into the dilapidated house of an old man by chance and have to stay there overnight. The old man’s words force the lady in the course of the night to realize how unhappy she is with her husband, whom she had married of her own choice. To maintain dominance over his wife, the husband would throw derogatory remarks at her, such as ‘Won’t you use your head before talking’, ‘Don’t you devour Ranjan’s absurd words [Ranjan may be her lover]? Your imagination gets excited at absurd sight or word. You are too imaginative!’, ‘[Exasperated] Don’t I understand your eccentricities?’ The lady resists sometimes: ‘Sometimes, I feel that to be imaginative is a crime’, ‘Look for a job abroad.… To be a different being’, ‘You do not understand me.… Never tried…. Whatever I tried to say, you refuted all as childishness, craziness.’58 In spite of their differences, they both know and feel that he loves her.59 But Sircar places the old man on top, as a prophet, a seer, a soothsayer, even as a supernatural presence. From the beginning, he starts predicting on the basis of some inexplicable theories. At the correctness of his prophecies, both are amazed, but the woman is more impressed.60 It is her feeling and realization that the old man understands her better, which ultimately culminates in their lovemaking scene when the husband is fast asleep. But that could not protect him from the knowledge of his wife’s adultery. At the end, he goes out and the curtain drops on an inconclusive situation. The play is a search for identity of a woman who had a love marriage, but is unhappy with her subjugation; the old man also is in search of an imaginary femininity.61 So, a sense of deprivation unites the woman of 28 with an aged man. It is easily understandable that the woman has not been given her due and the old man is deprived—both physically and psychologically—but it is not clear how the woman accepts that the old man is truly dependable, or at least possesses better qualities than her own ‘degraded’ husband. Apart from a sincere hospitality, the old man does not show any romantic signs to persuade the woman, who is hungry for an honest reciprocity, to submit. He is as authoritative as her husband. When he

explains the concept of the woman residing in his imagination, he demands that the woman be absolutely obsessed with love: a love for him only.62 On 12 September 1963, Sircar wrote in his diary, ‘I am that old man.’ Six days later, on 18 September, he wrote, ‘I dream of a love, which would not bind me, would not make me feel guilty, but collect its resources from love itself for the journey.’63 ‘… Yes, I do romanticise the woman. As I romanticise so many other things in life. Why should’nt [sic] I?’64 In the play, the old man says that his woman can never be found because he demands absolute submission without anything in return. In ecstasy, the woman agrees to give everything in return for the following words: ‘You just say, you have dreamt [of] me.’ The old man does so, and the woman jumps on him.65 Does this course of conversation and action not justify her craziness that the old man demanded from his imaginary woman? Is the old man’s command of soothsaying, which impressed her, an acceptable reason to vindicate her act of betrayal? What is the difference between the old man and the husband when both try to dehumanize the woman in their own ways? One can trace certain links to Ebong Indrajit in the manner men construct and treat the women in their lives, and perhaps also in the technique, because Sircar claimed to have written it unpremeditatedly, as if possessed by a spirit. On 9 September 1963, Sircar wrote in his letter, ‘This is also mine, like Ebong Indrajit.… One of the important criticisms of my plays is repetitiveness. I say the same thing again and again. That criticism can become very strong here.’66 Yet, Sararattir and Ebong Indrajit enriched him in return because ‘these two are my true, personal writings. They are me.’67 Readers of Sircar’s plays might be surprised and amused by what he produced in immediate succession. After Sararattir, in the same month, he started the comedy titled Ballabhpurer Rupkatha,68 which was completed on 29 October,69 though in the collected works, the year is given as 1963–4.70 He wrote in his diary on 17 October 1963 that he had not been in a position to write a play like this, yet he wanted to finish as he had already started it. ‘Otherwise, there is no escape from the pain of prolonged selfestablishment.’71 Throughout Prabaser Hijibiji, this ‘pain of the self’ can be observed; its length and breadth are strewn with the pathos of Sircar’s inability to express, and the limitations of self-revelation and self-assertion. Ballabhpurer Rupkatha might have been a serious play about decadent feudalism and the dominance of a new merchant class over the old

zamindars. Again, adapted from a Hollywood production, The Ghost Goes West (1935),72 Sircar created the ambience well to suggest the emergence of the capitalist class and changing face of society, but led us to a concluding nuptial conjugation of Bhupati, the last ‘king’ of Ballabhpur, and Chhanda, the daughter of Mr Haldar, owner of a soap factory and buyer of old historical buildings. To pay off the money, which Bhupati owed, he decides to sell off his 400-year-old, run-down ancestral mansion to the owner of Swapnachhanda Cosmetics Limited, Mr Haldar. At first, Mr Haldar is enthralled by its antiquity, more so to beat his rival, Shibnarayan Chaudhuri, who also has a passion for old mansions. Haldar’s reactions sound similar to those of the flourishing mercantile class, but, ultimately, creating the romance and even a ghost, Sircar simply has a lot of fun. Immediately after Ballabhpurer Rupkatha, according to his autobiography, he finished Kabi-kahini within six days in December 1964. In the introduction to Kabi-kahini, Sircar argues strongly in favour of such comedies. In order to underline his views on the aesthetics of drama, I quote from the ‘Playwright’s Statement’: Many people said, after practising on ‘fun’ plays I started writing ‘good plays’ like Ebong Indrajit, Baki Itihas. For two reasons I have objections to such statements. First, this is not all true. I wrote Kabi-kahini and other comedies after Ebong Indrajit. If possible, I would write more. Secondly, this statement suggests that comedies are inferior. I don’t think so at all. Even if I am to agree that there is no substance, no discussion of contemporary problems in comedies, the essence of humour or laughter is not reduced. I do not want to agree that we Bengalis love to cry and are ashamed of laughter. I would rather say, we can laugh in our utmost distress, blossom a tragedy with a smile, and confront a crisis by representing it with fun. That is why, to me humour is valuable. Humour which is healthy, free from buffoonery, caricature or grotesque, is not aimless to me; at least, till now.73

Kabi-kahini deals with the preparatory period of assembly elections in a small town of West Bengal. Sircar took the opportunity to incorporate one personal experience with a touch of ‘the bitter cynicism under the mask of the comic’.74 During the election of 1946, two or three of them had to go to an election office as party cadres on a regular basis to copy the voters’ list. They followed the instruction diligently only to discover a few days later that the list had already been prepared, yet they were ordered to do it again only to keep them busy. In an ironical tone Sircar asked in his autobiography whether he could be blamed for including this incident in Kabi-kahini where only its

humorous aspect had been portrayed, keeping the play limited to individuals, whereas his real experience was related to the leadership of a national party.75 The play starts with the playwright’s description of the room. The sixth sentence goes like this: ‘On one side, there are office table and chair as if trespassers in this room—for temporary need.’76 This kind of intrusion in a dramatic text is all very nice for reading, but possibly superfluous to the audience, and difficult to convey in theatre. In the second scene, while describing the speed of Sanat’s writing, the playwright comments: ‘Watching his extreme speed of writing, it occurs that instead of being a teacher, he would have excelled as a journalist.’77 Sometimes his intrusive perceptions overstep the bounds of logicality/possibility; it is one such example. Bichitranushthan (1964),78 written in France,79 is about the fuss in presenting various cultural performances on stage, as we have witnessed in Bara Pisima. The slapstick humour has been thickened by ‘performance within performance’. The plot was probably based on Sircar’s personal experience because, in the preface, he wrote that the names of the characters had been chosen from those of the members of his own group Chakra.80 Next came Baki Itihas (1965),81 a masterpiece as emphatic and overwhelming as Ebong Indrajit. All the ‘joviality’ of the previous three plays fade away in an endeavour ‘to lift his audience to the higher plane of social and political criticism’.82 One feels compelled to retrospect the long history of mankind and in turn introspect very own past and individual (mis)deeds. This play was a sudden jolt to his comedy-loving readers: so personal, yet so political. The days of Solution X and Bara Pisima were relegated to the archives; the individual, nevertheless, was still his protagonist and would remain so as an instrument to awaken political and social commitment and consciousness and channel them into a collective force. By his natural mastery over the technique of playwriting, Sircar wove the plot like any thriller, although the play starts with Saradindu and his wife Basanti’s naive search for a new plot for the latter’s next story. In Scene 1, Basanti conceives an attractive intrigue leading to the suicide of Sitanath, a poor middle-class man. In Scene 2, Saradindu raises some objections to her story, and at Basanti’s insistence writes one where Sitanath is depicted as a psychosexual pervert. In order to escape his attraction towards girls of very tender age, although he had a caring wife, the school headmaster Sitanath

commits suicide. But in Scene 3, Sitanath’s apparition appears in front of Saradindu to introduce him to the ‘remaining’ history, which is nothing but the annals of hatred, exclusion, obliteration, murder, vested interests, and power, and mocks their (Saradindu and Basanti’s) speculative analysis and configuration of Sitanath’s death. It was perhaps Saradindu’s subconscious mind that woke up in the shape of Sitanath’s supernatural spirit to question his (their) luxury of thought that can only presume, assume, and anticipate the reasons for someone’s suicide in a fashionable manner far from reality. That was why Sitanath asks him repeatedly why Saradindu did not commit suicide. The following dialogue between the spirit of Sitanath and Saradindu shows how futile the idea of life under an overwhelming past of war and destruction is, and that there is no sign of lasting peace: SITANATH: No. You cannot do anything. I could not do anything. Nobody can do anything. Torture, murder, riot, war—everything will continue. Everything will be done by man, yet he has nothing to do. The one, who is happy with peaceful meals twice a day, will drive a bayonet into someone’s abdomen. The scientist, who cannot tolerate the pain of an animal, will create a hundred-thousand-killer weapon. All these are human beings. Like you and me. All these are trying to find the meaning of life and live on. SARADINDU: They are living though? SITANATH: They are pretending to live. When there is no meaning, they are pretending to live out of habit. As I did, as you are doing. SARADINDU: No, this cannot be! This cannot be! There is another side of history. There is peace on the other side of war, love against torture; certainly there is! Otherwise— otherwise everyone will have to commit suicide. [Sitanath turns to Saradindu with a serene smile on his face. Saradindu is taken aback by that smile and steps back.] Why did you commit suicide? [Sitanath looks on with a silent smile.] (Painfully) Was it not possible to stay alive? Was it not possible to live like others? SITANATH: Man would either live or die. SARADINDU: (Almost his last attempt) But the others? SITANATH: (Patiently) Others can, Saradindu. Being not alive, not dead. SARADINDU: How do they manage? SITANATH: In hope. SARADINDU: Hope? SITANATH: When the meaning of life is no more, they think—one day the meaning will return. When their living is finished, they think—it will resume again. They have hope. SARADINDU: Did you not have hope? SITANATH: No. I did not have hope. My past, present, and future were convoluted.

SARADINDU: (With bated breath) Mine? (Sitanath is silent) Speak up! Mine? SITANATH: (Not answering, walking towards the other side) Today both of you have spent the whole day speculating the reasons for my death. SARADINDU: (To himself) Yes. Speculation. SITANATH: (Turning back) Saradindu, didn’t you know the reasons when you had been speculating? SARADINDU: (Slowly) Perhaps. Now I think I knew. SITANATH: (In an affectionate voice) Why didn’t you commit suicide, Saradindu? [Saradindu cannot hear, as if lost in thought.] Why didn’t you commit suicide, Saradindu? [Saradindu comes around, slowly walks down to the other side of the room, stops and then turns to Sitanath wearily.] SARADINDU: Go away, Saradindu. SITANATH: I am Sitanath. SARADINDU: Go away, Sitanath.83

The question becomes the central idea of the play, and it is realized that the first two scenes have ridiculed the imbecility, literary fabrications and intellectual gamesmanship of the reader/spectator. That the ‘familial happiness’ is nothing but a repetitive illusion and even callousness amidst the clutter of humanity’s monstrous disasters becomes the moot point. To avoid these disturbing questions, Saradindu takes recourse to the news of his prospective promotion.84 A life of inertia emanated from forced blindness, digression, diversion, and ignorance becomes the object of criticism. Ebong Indrajit was primarily an assimilation of quest, aspiration, love, and despair of an individual, which apparently have no bearing on the textuality of Baki Itihas, but Sircar correctly said: I had to invent the stories, … and I can never invent stories. Practically no plays of mine has [sic] a story for the simple reason that I can’t write stories…. But the germ of the third act was already there. In a way it was a kind of recapitulation or rewriting of Ebong Indrajit that came out in the third act with a difference. Not the myth of Sisyphus, but the baki itihas [sic].85

The third act is in fact the introspection of an individual, who rummages through the annihilating past of the world. Saradindu does not share Indrajit’s ideas, but his experience and realization make one believe that Indrajit is now a more mature individual, who is not merely worried about his own existence, but the existence of others as well.

Bagh (1965) is based on Murray Schisgal’s The Tiger. In his introduction to Rupantarita Natak (Adapted Plays), Sircar wrote very complacently that he did not have the original play at his disposal when he was writing Bagh. Instead, he relied on his memory, which resulted in deviation from the line of Schisgal’s play; most importantly, the meanings of Bagh and The Tiger are completely different from each other.86 It was first staged in 1968 by Satabdi. Another group, Ayna, produced it in the form of the Third Theatre much later, and the play was successful in towns and villages as well, a fact Sircar had never anticipated. He thought that friendship, its central idea, might have been the reason for its wide acceptance.87 In Bagh, he tried to create a fairytale-like atmosphere, which would more easily profess the ideas of Ebong Indrajit, Sararattir, and Baki Itihas, all together. Although he started off well, he could not maintain the same energy, pace, and vibrancy till the end and abruptly drew the line at the sprouting friendship between the tiger and the young lady (who is someone’s wife). Again, we find her to be a suppressed character against the tiger’s masculinity, despite the fact that she is associated with a mahila samiti (presumably the women’s front of the communist movement). The dynamics and complexities of relationships between men and women constitute the central idea of Jadi Ar Ekbar (1966), Pagla Ghora (1967), and Bibar (1967). Interestingly, all of them deal with relationships that are not socially acceptable, and eventually do not mature into a healthy affinity. For example, in Jadi Ar Ekbar, adapted from J.M. Barrie’s romantic fantasy Dear Brutus, in spite of being married to Karuna, Ratikanta Sanyal shares a deep intimacy with Banalata Roy. Perhaps their affair is known to Karuna. Unhappiness is obvious between Sanjay Ghosh and Atashi, the other two characters. With the help of Buddha, an old genie, the dramatist creates situations desirable to these characters—Ratikanta is married to Banalata, and Atashi is married to a Marwari businessman (as she is unhappy with Sanjay’s earnings and their social status)—which also fail to satisfy their demands. The moral of the play is that nobody is happy with what they have. Selffulfilment is never attained. Depth of poignancy is attained in Pralap (1966) and Pare Konodin (1966), written in Enugu, Nigeria. Sircar claimed that the structural inspiration of the former was received from a foreign play (Next Time I’ll Sing to You by the British Absurdist James Saunders), although the objective, meaning, and dialogues were conceived by himself, while the latter was written after an

English work of science fiction, but the concluding dimension, absent in the original story, was his own.88 The focal point of Pralap is a few characters’ endeavour to put on a proper rehearsal of a play about the life of Manab, an ordinary character. It is a combination of a situational comedy as well as serious thoughts and questions about life. On the one hand, Phatik makes fun of almost everything, while on the other, Jyoti is concerned about directing his play. Manab is worried about the digressions made to his character, while Jyoti wants to finish the rehearsal as quickly as possible. The play is about the usual hodgepodge of any production in progress, reminding us of Bara Pisima and Bichitranushthan, but there are also thought-provoking, insightful statements which make the play interesting, such as: JYOTI: The same thing every time; the circle of the same words; spinning with the same words; around the same words.… There is no meaning to this problem; no meaning to its solution either; no meaning, necessity, significance to this play…. PHATIK: Sleep. With open eyes. We all do the same…. Everything is done by the hands, feet, and tongue. The brain is sleeping…. Have to sleep by making the reflexes awake. CHHAYA: Then how to know whether we’re asleep or awake? PHATIK: There is no way to know, that is the fun.89

In the guise of a few characters’ ‘delirium’, and a drama rehearsal, the play questioned and mocked at the practice of writing lofty words and philosophizing on life (the scene in the beginning where Phatik is reading out), the monotony of every day, the repetitiveness of human appearance, the futility of any work of art—especially drama—in dealing with problems, the need to search for the meaning of life, even the significance of contemporary Bengali cinema and theatre. Amidst this cacophonous conversation, the dissection of Manab’s life continues. A life which is absolutely non-dramatic and prosaic is being scrutinized, sometimes jibed at, by all the others. When we hear Jyoti say to Manab, ‘Don’t worry, there won’t be any pain. Relax. Let loose your dreams; don’t stretch your principles; leave your hopes and desires, don’t pressurize your morality; soften the values’,90 we understand how the simplicity of human life becomes an object of derision to others. Although there are elements to admire in that simple, non-happening life, in a world of assets and liabilities, such an existence ultimately turns out to be only an assimilation of absurd delirium. But without delirium, it cannot be discussed either. That is the irony.

In Pare Konodin, we see Sankar, the protagonist, write about his personal experience of October 1926. The scene starts with a painful Sankar trying to write something so that he can stop an ensuing catastrophe, but cannot. As soon as he starts speaking, the scene dissolves into the past, his memory. He had gone to his ancestral home of Mohanpur on a vacation, when a few foreigners came and rented one of their houses. Their motive remains undisclosed until they leave, when Sankar reveals that almost the whole town was destroyed by the impact of a meteor, which killed 800 people, including Sankar’s elder brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and friends. A little before this disaster, he came to know that the foreigners were ‘future-men’, who had arrived from some thousand years in the future, but he did not know the reason. After the devastation, when all the foreigners were gone, Serin— another foreigner from that age—comes to compose music out of that calamity. Sankar realizes that to Serin and his forerunners, the annihilation of Mohanpur was just an event, which as future-men they knew would happen, but did not do anything to save the people because though they could have intervened, it was prohibited by their system. Had they changed their past, their present would also have been changed. They were happy with their present and did not want things otherwise.91 Sircar explores the nature of history, how historical processes could affect the present, and the relationship of the present to the past.92 He then twists the situation with Sankar’s questions: ‘Your music composition would not be completed by this? Need more?’ Serin replied: ‘Yes, Sankar, need more. Eight hundred people died in a natural calamity in an unknown township like Mohanpur and twenty-five hundred died in the ensuing epidemic. Is this too much in the history of human destruction?’93 Serin would then disclose that some 200,000 people would die instantly after 19 years. He expressed his inability to tell exactly how many died in the aftermath, over many years. To Sankar’s bewildered question, Serin answered that the cause would not be natural but man-made. Hiroshima, 6 August 1945, would be Serin’s last destination; there he would conclude his composition. Within the flash of a few lines, Sircar elevated the play, inspired by science fiction, to the level of the critique of the destructive history of power-hungry, war-mongering human beings. Sankar asked whether Serin would try to stop the instantaneous annihilation of 200,000 people. As a future-man, the composer replied patiently, ‘It is not that they will die, Sankar. They have already died. Long ago.’94 Sankar was awestruck, baffled,

confused; he drops on the cot, Serin stands silently. The stage becomes dark and the scene dissolves to the first scene of the first act where we had seen Sankar trying to write ‘something’ in order to inform everyone of ‘something’, to stop something. In the last scene, it becomes clear what he was trying to say, to inform. He was trying to save the life of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This awakening touch makes Pare Konodin a littleknown milestone in Sircar’s career, the first of his plays about nuclear holocaust. Tringsa Satabdi (1966) begins where Pare Konodin concluded—the wellknown incidents of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and testing in the Bikini islands. Sircar knew that there was nothing new to say about them, yet his deep agony and anxiety about the massacre of human lives forced him to depict his own trauma at the thought of the cruellest destruction in the history of mankind. So, in the beginning, he introduces Sarat, the male protagonist, to justify the play. Sarat says (in the revised, updated text): The point of this play—do we, the commoners of India, have a responsibility with regard to the destruction of Hiroshima by an American bomb? Neither did we start this war nor did we drop the bomb. The play was written in 1966, but it became more significant on 18 May 1974 when an atom bomb was test-fired deep in the desert of Rajasthan. We enacted the first show of this play on 6 August [Hiroshima Day], the same year. Presumably, its importance has increased now. It is not a beautiful play. We don’t know whether this play can be staged beautifully. Nor do we wish to do that…. Our only aim is to place the main question of this play to you. We would not request you to spare us for our weakness in acting or mistakes of production, but for that your focus should not be shifted from the main question—this is the only request.95

Thus, Sircar’s aim was to raise the question: do we have any responsibility? Like Sankar in Pare Konodin? When Sarat realizes his responsibility, he becomes eccentric and mentally disturbed. Before that he summons the chosen characters of that dramatic disaster—soldiers, victims, students, teacher, and doctor—to let the audience know the monstrosity inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The justification for the play’s title is found in Sarat’s eventual eccentricity, caused by his knowledge of the gruesome details. The testimonies of the soldiers, victims, students, teacher, and doctor make him upset and impatient, and he keeps saying, ‘Thirtieth Century, listen. Listen. Listen to me. Listen to Twentieth Century. Men and women of Thirtieth Century listen to me. Listen to the men and women of Twentieth Century…. Twentieth Century is accused. I am Twentieth

Century…. Listen. Thirtieth Century listen. I am innocent. My century is innocent. My deformed, crippled, ugly century is innocent.’96 But why is his century innocent when it committed the ghastliest crime in the history of mankind? Sarat perceives that a perpetual enemy of man is destroying him down the centuries. He thus appeals to the people who would come after a thousand years: Listen, beautiful, calm, pious people of Thirtieth Century. My century could also have been beautiful. Had the perpetual, innate enemy of men not destroyed him, men of this century would also have been peaceful, pious…. Man is that unremitting enemy of man. I was scared, attacked, I attacked, killed. I saw the shadow of a living eye in his dead eyes—saw myself. I destroyed and was destroyed! It was not killing, self-defence. Self-defence from myself. I am innocent! My century is innocent!97

Sarat continues to implore and accuse the generation of the Thirtieth Century for being judgemental of the Twentieth Century, its mother, even though born of the throes of labour of his century.98 But: Thirtieth Century is not answering. Perhaps, there is no Thirtieth Century. Perhaps there is no century after this one. Perhaps, everything is destroyed in this century. Light of the world went out.… But I am here! I—Sarat Chaudhuri—am here! I, Sarat Chaudhuri, am saying, taking responsibility of this century—I will answer! I will answer on behalf of this century! Today! Tomorrow! Endlessly! (Pointing figure to the audience) You? What would you do—have you decided yet? You? You? You?99

Perhaps Sarat was not saying anything in defence of his century, simply calling on us all to act. We had heard him say a little earlier, Will these leave me if I leave them? … Forget these? But how? … Suppose—we forget deliberately, but do you and I have the right to forget? … Their responsibility is mine, likewise their responsibility is yours…. If anyone denies this responsibility, I have to take it. Suppose, after one thousand years, men and women of Thirtieth Century discover our actions and say—Look, men of Twentieth Century! Bunch of self-destructive, perverted beasts. What will you answer? … [After Sadhan’s reply that he would not be alive to answer, Sarat says] But I have to…. I have to live in order to support my century in front of Thirtieth Century.100

Evidently, there is sarcasm in Sarat’s comments when he says that he has to support his century, knowing fully well that there is nothing to support, and he admits that his century could also have been beautiful. Perhaps it is not his intention to accuse his century directly; instead, he wanted to convict

his fellow citizens, some of whom were responsible for the mass killings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to protect a motherly, speechless century. It is a process of dissociating, separating a helpless century from its self-seeking, death-dealing elements, evolving Baki Itihas through Pare Konodin into Tringsa Satabdi. An example of nuclear criticism,101 and ‘Sircar’s first attempt at documentary drama’,102 Tringsa Satabdi is largely based on Fernand Gigon’s Formula for Death: E=mc2 (The Atom Bombs and After),103 and Sartre’s The Condemned of Altona.104 Before this play, mention of nuclear terror was found in Ebong Indrajit, Baki Itihas, Pare Konodin, and Pralap, one after the other.105 The anxiety continued even later. Tringsa Satabdi ‘was revived, most significantly, when India exploded its first nuclear missile’.106 In 2000, in a letter to the editor of the Economic and Political Weekly, Sircar, among others, expressed deep concern over West Bengal government’s plan to set up a nuclear power plant in the Sundarban region.107 Interestingly, the seed of structural change that we had noticed in Ebong Indrajit and Baki Itihas has now grown into a sapling blurring the scene–act dogma in Tringsa Satabdi. The players are also dissolving into many characters easily. In this play, Sircar’s language is sharper, too, even if utilitarian. He questions, but the tone and objective of these questions are different. The impact is more like shock therapy, hammering away. We understand that a change is coming which will redefine the concept of playwriting and theatre production in India. Sircar wrote in his letter on 9 September 1963, ‘I would not be able to write plays like Bara Pisima any more. My ability to excite laughter is diminishing; instead, my writings are becoming insipid. I am also losing the capacity for writing practical incidents as they are. They are taking shapes of allegory, poetry; becoming strange, bizarre.’108 Although the reason is hidden behind—as we have already noticed—his personal crises, the dearth of amusement, is also related to—as Sircar mentioned in a letter—the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the human race,109 which I would like to call ‘atomic crisis’. However, we still have to wait for some more years to witness further changes because Sircar was still going through the poignancy of seclusion first etched in Sararattir. Superficially recalling Jadi Ar Ekbar, Pagla Ghora is a reflection of four characters’ incomplete, unfulfilled affairs. These men,

known to each other, come together on one night for the funeral rites of a common acquaintance. The spirit of the cremated lady appears to rekindle their emotions and feelings for the women they loved, and to realize in the end that one of them was also passionate about her. The twist not only surprises us, but also makes the spirit yearn for life. In order to stir the sense of responsibility through guilt complex with regard to the relationship of the four men, the idea of suicide recurs in this play.110 Bibar was inspired by Samaresh Basu’s novel of the same title. In the preface to the play, Sircar wrote, ‘I read Samaresh Basu’s Bibar in Nigeria. It was discredited for obscenity, but I was stirred by its inner meaning. Its dramatization was difficult because almost the entire novel was a reflection of the hero’s thoughts. I made Samaresh-babu read the play; he appreciated it. To my question he replied that the central idea was clear in the play.’111 The assimilation and identification of lecherousness, subornation, greed for money and success, procurement of escorts and prostitutes, and all sorts of corporate machinations in Prodyot, the protagonist, and his repeated criticism of his own ‘filth’ and ‘dirt’—‘I am what you are’112—have made Bibar an introspective text. Unlike psychological portraits, Prodyot is starkly unambiguous. He is aware of his lechery and crookedness, and admits them openly, but somewhere—inconspicuously—unhappiness was also taking root. Perhaps tired of hypocrisy, deception, success, and compromises, Prodyot was rebelling within himself, which resulted in his committing a murder. In his assessment of the play, Sircar wrote, ‘I don’t think that I did any injustice to Samaresh Basu. There is nothing from outside the text, only sequences are rearranged, though interpretation is mine.’113 After a gap of two years—a significant silence for a dramatist as productive as Sircar—in 1969 he wrote Circus, which he did not want to publish because he wished to revise it, and later changed it to Sesh Nei (There Is No End; 1970). However, at the insistence of the editors of Angan, the Third Theatre journal, it appeared in its September 1988 issue.114 As I have mentioned, a structural break away from standard dramatic convention could be perceived in Tringsa Satabdi, and Circus, which draws on Sircar’s own political background, took a step forward in that direction. It manifests the psychic struggle of the individual(s) in the perspective of the desire for a communist movement, its failure, and the dereliction and deviation of some communist leaders from its ideologies. Like Sircar, the play did not keep any

faith in the old leadership; instead, it concludes with the dream that a new stream of fresh blood will rejuvenate the force of the movement, whereas the final message in Sesh Nei is that the trial would continue. Critics have noticed the traces of Kafka’s The Trial in Sesh Nei:115 ‘The play is somewhat static as Sumanta, a successful writer, suddenly and quite inexplicably finds himself involved in a Kafkaesque trial.’116 Veena Noble Dass went further to suggest that the play resembles Akira Kurosowa’s Roshomon in the Woods: Sircar ‘acknowledged that the idea of dramatising a number of versions of the same story was inspired by Roshomon’.117 A continuation of or supplement to Sesh Nei, Sagina Mahato is important in more ways than one. In the introductory note, Sircar has claimed that it was his first play to be enacted in anganmancha. Therefore, Sircar attributed special credit to it in his Third Theatre movement.118 Although it was initially written for the proscenium stage, later consideration placed Sagina Mahato in a new concept of space (anganmancha) in Indian theatre.119 Quite possibly, Sircar took up the issue of the errant, hypocritical leadership of the Left because Gourkishore Ghosh’s original story contained it, remembering his own disenchantment with the party in his youth. Distaste for the film version of Sagina Mahato motivated Sircar to write a play on the same story, which was completely changed in the new genre: Gourkishore approved and appreciated this dramatization after lending an ear.120 The film, in Sircar’s eyes, portrayed Sagina as an individual tragic character. It was thus necessary to depict the universality of Sagina’s suffering.121 Through the character of Sagina, Sircar tried to establish how the Left movement made use of innocent men and women like the tea-garden workers to its own end, how their voices were stifled, appropriated, and displaced in the name of the pan-India movement and for the sake of developing the party base among the tea-garden workers. In their pursuit, the party leadership disregarded the basic demands of the workers from the outset. Like any corporate institution, they even used an educated, urban female comrade to allure Sagina. Hypocrisy and deviation definitely stood in the way of the Left movement in India. The question is whether these anti-people forces were monitored or purged. At one point in Circus, Bishu admits that degeneration and degradation did not creep into the whole of the leadership.122 However, I shall discuss Sagina Mahato in greater detail in Chapter Five, which deals with anganmancha and after.

Abu Hossain (1971) was an adaptation, or as Sircar liked to put it, a ‘distortion’123 of Girishchandra Ghosh’s commercial entertainer dating back to 1893. This musical comedy is noteworthy in Sircar’s career because a little before the Third Theatre era, it helped Satabdi survive its financial crisis. The use of popular film songs at a time when theatre was creating a parallel cultural taste for its audience is significant and needs to be read in the light of growing commercialism of leisure activities. However, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, who knew Satabdi closely, gave interesting information in this regard. Ghosh’s play was adorned with popular male characters, songs based on classical ragas like khambaj-mishra, dadra-bhairavi, ektal-bibhas, jhaptal, etc., and female characters. Satabdi was not in a position to ‘bear the pressure of so many popular characters’; it did not have as many female actors as the original play required, nor were the performers trained to deliver classical songs. As a result, the number of characters was reduced in Sircar’s play; popular film songs were made to use to contemporize the comical aspects. In spite of these differences, Sircar’s play echoes the idea of pursuing an ‘eccentric dream’ of the original play.124 Adaptation and personal memories were two important instruments of Sircar’s proscenium plays. It cannot escape our attention that in the introductions to almost all the plays adapted from the English films, Sircar customarily mentioned his inability to understand them, or dependence on memory, leading to ‘deviation’ of his scripts from the original story. In these confessions, there is a deliberate attempt to claim originality of the plots and reduce the significance of the very act of adaptation. The plays based on Sircar’s memories, agonies, and desire—the experiences of theatre-making process, crisis of seclusion, desire for selfestablishment, anxiety about nuclear attack, romanticizing women, separation from the party politics—are turned into dramatic narratives of his personal life. The individualistic approach by a believer in Marxism, therefore, cannot remain unquestioned. As a matter of fact, many contradictions and antitheses of this nature can be observed in Sircar’s subsequent theatre-thinking as well. Critics have noticed the ‘notion of haunting’ as a recurring idea in some of the plays in order to depict the vulnerability and angst of human existence.125 ‘The ideas that recur in these plays have an almost obsessive air about them, like Pirandello’s passionate insistence on a few favourite themes.’126 Besides,

Sircar keeps juxtaposing his serious and light-hearted moods: sometimes he is worried about his milieu, sometimes immersed in jocundity, and sometimes preoccupied with romantic relationships—bringing about variety in production with signs of eventual change. The ‘bizarre’127 poetic quality of his dramatic language seems to have attracted admiration for solving ‘some of the problems of speech in verse’, too.128 But what kind of problem? His personal crises developed in isolation are reflected in most of the plays as the extremities of pain of the middle-class bhadralok characters to awaken the (middle-class) audience from inertia. The ill-fated Bengali bhadralok, who is deprived of theatricality (Ebong Indrajit), keeps coming back as ‘honest’ witness and protagonist to protect the so-called society.129 ‘The basic question raised in this play [Tringsa Satabdi] is whether we, as ordinary citizens of India, have any responsibility in the matter of nuclear bombs. The obvious answer seems to be “no”…. The real answer however is “yes” … it is the responsibility of every single person in the world to condemn and prevent such criminal actions.’130 Sircar is correct in his assessment of the historical background and placing the responsibility on everyone in order to prevent nuclear proliferation and any further massacre thereof, but the ordinary Indian citizens at that point in time had plenty of other immediate extremities to attend to, which were directly related to the question of their survival and subsistence. But Sircar would try to make his personal crisis a universal one: (i) ‘we, the middle class, regardless of our geographical placements, share in this colossal crime’;131 and (ii) ‘the world has become absurd by the absurd stupidity of some people.… Something must be done. With some others, if I cannot do it alone. This suicidal stupidity should be stopped by united protest.’132 Certainly, his problems remained tethered to the middle-class society, but to include everyone in that circle as a sign of universal problem is preposterous. That manifests Sircar’s unfamiliarity with India, the people of his class and their situation, let alone the toiling class. A society engulfed in millions of problems, which were barely associated with the drifting thought of an individual. His laughter, joy, despair, fear, cynicism, nostalgia, and creativity are relevant from an individual’s point of view, but are largely out of contemporary Indian social and political contexts. Neither happiness nor remorse of his characters was relevant to the demands

and crises of the time. Sircar’s proscenium plays are reduced to be the luxurious expressions of a self-exiled/self-seeking individual, and objects of enjoyment by a few like-minded bhadraloks.

Four THEATRICAL ABODE TO OPEN AIR FROM THESIS TO ANTITHESIS1

The Gladiators. (From L to R) Bhabatosh Das, Jagadish, Jyotirmoy Das, and others in Spartacus. Production: Satabdi, n.d.; (official) direction: Badal Sircar. Source: A former theatre worker.

Before the whole of India could get over the startling experience of plays like Ebong Indrajit, Baki Itihas, and Tringsa Satabdi, Sircar had started contemplating other directions. But even by 1967, when he established Satabdi, no major transformation had occurred in his conceptualization of theatre: ‘I was no different in my ideas about theatre.… The transformation of “Satabdi” marked the beginning of a long thinking process….’2 In this chapter, I look at the formation and development of the Third Theatre, and Sircar’s contribution as its primary mover. However, we need to acknowledge here that a visionary like Tagore had travelled a similar route about 70 years ago, which Sircar never referred to. I shall discuss this in Chapter Six. However, in the first three volumes of Purano Kasundi and in Prabaser Hijibiji, the most important part of his career, the Third Theatre, has not been detailed. When the time came in the fourth volume of Purano Kasundi, to our astonishment, Sircar evaded the issue: An India-famous critic, in the book review of a widely circulated daily, lamented the absence of narrative on the Third Theatre in the first three volumes of Purano Kasundi and Prabaser Hijibiji. This volume would disappoint him even more. It is not my responsibility to record the chronicle of the Third Theatre. If anyone has that responsibility, it is that of his profession, or of those who are researching on my works for the honours of academic institutions.3

As of now, we can say that chronicling the Third Theatre became complicated by this view of the playwright. No one has researched the issue comprehensively as yet, and there is no published secondary material to rely on. Sircar’s descriptions of incidents in interviews or monographs like The Third Theatre and the fourth volume of his autobiography are so fragmentary that it is difficult to reconstruct them into an exhaustive, continuous document of historical process. Running the risk of inconsistency and incorrectness always looms large. The following narrative is completely based on those cryptic documents from different sources. The ‘reorganized’4 Satabdi’s initial productions comprised of mostly Sircar’s proscenium plays written between 1963 and 1966,5 although a little later (on a two-month6 government cultural-exchange programme tour of the USSR, Poland, and Czechoslovakia in 19697), he would experience Yuri

Lyubimov’s productions of The Good Person of Szechwan, Galileo, Ten Days That Shook the World, and the rehearsals of Mother at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow; Jari’s pantomime and Cˇinoherní klub’s productions in Prague; and Grotowski’s theatre and his views about theatre8—which would have a decisive role in the making of the Third Theatre. But the first production of a new Satabdi on Sircar’s return, Pralap, and later Sararattir, Sesh Nei, and Ballabhpurer Rupkatha, did not reflect much of that experience, except for the partial application of Grotowski’s Poor Theatre. Gradually, he abrogated the use of sets, lights, props, costume, and make-up, and made his theatrical vocabulary ‘inexpensive’, thus transforming ‘poverty’ into an advantage.9 The culmination of these initial endeavours was Sagina Mahato (discussed as a text in the next chapter). The stage was depicted as different locations and times concurrently. To reduce the importance of language, emphasis was laid on ensemble acting, pantomime, rhythmic movement, song, and dance; sets were simplified and made portable.10 The momentous experience of the first experimental presentation of the play beyond the proscenium space, on 24 October 1971 at the ABTA hall in Calcutta,11 has been celebrated thus: After this production, I was convinced that I was in the right path towards the creation of the Third Theatre and that our Group should be geared fully to this form. It opened out entirely new possibilities in the field of theatre, and it appeared that no other Group but ours was thinking of exploring these tremendous possibilities.12

The last sentence of this statement oozes with Sircar’s objective of establishing himself as the progenitor of ‘new possibilities’ and ‘our Group’s’ distinctiveness in pursuing the ‘tremendous possibilities’. His aim at projecting himself as the maverick begetter of an alternative discourse is quite clear in this statement, which is much like his tendencies of claiming originality of the adapted plays (see Chapter Three). Sircar might not have liked Shouvanik’s open-air production of Ebong Indrajit (see Chapter Two), but their historical importance cannot be undermined in this context. Nor should the possibilities opened up by Silhouette, before Satabdi’s undertakings, be overlooked. However, unavailability of theatre halls, after the production of Sagina Mahato, prompted them to look for new areas.13 The decision to revert to a musical farce like Abu Hossain, nearly three months after the performance of

Sagina Mahato at the ABTA hall,14 on the proscenium stage might have been disastrous, but to Sircar its humour was ‘fresh’. Besides, its inherent structural complexities appeared to be challenging and worthy of presentation.15 The idea of breaking away from the limits of the story–characters schema had stimulated him for quite some time. In pursuit, ‘theme’ and ‘types’ had already replaced them in his drama. In place of characters, and even later types, ‘groups’ emerged as the new feature; instead of exclusive dialogue between characters, the much older tradition of communicating directly with the audience was incorporated and physical acting took precedence over spoken language. Sagina Mahato’s successful representation and Abu Hossain’s acceptance, afterwards, gave him the confidence to produce ‘any theme … in theatre—even highly complex epic themes’.16 Thus emerged Spartacus, which underwent rigorous modification by the group members during rehearsals. The workshops helped the actors overcome psychological barrier and build a sense of empathy and tenderness for each other. The script of the play, which was not supported by customary production notes, signs, or diagrams, as learnt from Western production techniques, was changed, in many places, by the action and sound of the performers.17 Before writing Spartacus (in January 1972), significantly, Sircar had met the avant-garde American director Richard Schechner in 1971 in Calcutta, and worked with him and Joan MacIntosh.18 Next year in July, he flew to New York to meet Schechner and experience the ‘environmental theatre’ at his invitation.19 Later, he travelled to other parts of the USA with Schechner’s company, and even to Canada. Schechner divulged the teaching contents that he imparted to Sircar in an interview with Cobina Gillitt: ‘Badal’s use of the ideas and exercises he observed that summer completed a very interesting circle, because I had learned the core of those exercises from Grotowski, who had taken them, or adapted at least some of them, from kathakali. Then I taught them to Sircar, who brought them back to Calcutta’20 Sircar was further introduced to the ‘environment’ of space, spectators, and performers spread through and noticeable at all levels in the productions of Commune by Schechner’s group.21 Apart from the rehearsals and performances of Schechner, he got to see some Broadway and Off-Broadway productions and meet, with the help of the Schechners, many theatre practitioners like Julian Beck and Judith Malina of the Living Theater, Andre

Gregory of the Manhattan Project, and members of the Firehouse Theatre. His attendance at some of the study sessions of the Living Theater ‘on the interrelations of money, war, and love which constituted the subject matter of’ The Legacy of Cain22 would have a lasting effect on Sircar. Above anything else, this short visit, as expressed by Sircar, taught him the importance of intense training and rigorous rehearsal sessions.23 Before flying to the USA, in March 1972, Sircar met Anthony Serchio of La Mama Experimental Theatre.24 The group was also introduced to Serchio and benefited from his guidance and workshops towards more active participation in the making of a play.25 But Sircar had something else in his mind, which tragically never happened. ‘We were preparing a base whereby the next play may not be written by Badal Sircar or any other playwright, but created by “Satabdi”—the entire Group.’26 Such plays do not exist, nor did Satabdi ever come to be known for this sort of creativity, though Sircar claimed to have created many plays with the collective contribution of the group members. The plays produced in collaboration with the group members interestingly bear only Sircar’s name as their author. See Chapter Seven for a detailed discussion. The preparations for anganmancha—which has been translated as ‘Space Theatre’ by Sircar,27 but I prefer to call it theatre-in-the-round, as a form of intimate theatre in a small or large room/enclosed area without elevated platform/stage—started as soon as he returned from the USA. According to the manifesto that Sircar drafted at that time, this theatre was ‘flexible’, where the performers and the audience would be relatively close, sometimes ‘intermingled’, to ‘minimise’ the obstruction and the distance between them.28 With regard to performances in 850 square feet room of the Academy of Fine Arts in Calcutta, where 60 to 75 spectators could have been accommodated,29 it was unnecessary to underline the importance of minimizing the distance between the performers and the spectators. It was inherent in the choice of the space/venue. A little later he would write, ‘One of our main ideas on Anganmancha—to build up a community of theatre-workers and theatre-goers taken together’.30 While this form of performance was in itself an exclusive affair, Sircar tried to glorify Satabdi’s use of ‘flat backless seats of three different heights’ at the anganmancha. To him, the chairs were the signs of ‘special sitting areas’ that would have separated spectators and performers.31 Sircar’s preposterous

contradictions would be discussed in the following chapters, but, as of now, it would suffice to say that in such a private performance, everything associated with it is transformed into a special, exclusive, therefore divisive, character, not just the chairs; the statement to build up a ‘community’, and the idea of togetherness, limited to a handful of like-minded, privileged individuals, become nothing but a bourgeois overstatement. However, occupancy of a much-longed-for abode eased the crisis of ‘homelessness’ for the time being: after a long search, Satabdi found a refuge on the second floor of the Academy of Fine Arts, on rent for three days a week, to experiment with the new form in Spartacus. Abolition of the ticketing system or admission charges is claimed to be one of the prominent aspects of the Third Theatre, but initially it was not so. In order to regulate admission, and allow ‘genuine theatre lovers’ only,32 which, in fact, is an example of exclusive, elite theatre management, Sircar made it clear in his manifesto at the outset that the customary ticketing system would be replaced by the introduction of a system of membership. The manifesto is followed by the details of charges, and number of performances to be produced by Satabdi in return. In response, Satabdi enlisted 325 ordinary and 14 life members.33 After Abu Hossain, things had not been quite favourable for the group; but now, with everything almost under control, they engaged in the production of Spartacus doggedly. The play did not have acts or scenes, nor was any set design put to use. The costumes were contemporized; words were replaced by the physical action of the performers; actors’ voices and humming were used without instrumental accompaniment; the audience was constellated at different places across the floor, transforming the surface into an archipelago of viewers right in the heart of the performance.34 Ananda Lal recounted his experience of the performance: As spectators, we were made to sit all over the floor of the room—a most unusual experience for me. When the time came for the play to begin, we heard a gradually increasing hubbub outside that heightened to a crescendo, followed by the sudden rush of all the performers into the room, who fell helter-skelter amidst the audience. They were the slaves, we realized later, dressed in basic sackcloth and in bare feet. I remember one of them dropped in front of me on my feet, which I instinctively withdrew. The moment is inscribed in my memory—my first encounter with shock effect in theatre—a highly influential impact on me as a director, even if second-hand from Artaudian Theatre of Cruelty.35

This unique experience was celebrated by the audience, which in turn made Sircar enthusiastic. Here it would be interesting to note that after each show they used to invite the audience for informal conversations on the performance, which may remind us of Schechner’s idea and practice of actor–audience interaction sessions to build a closer relationship between them. We do not know how these meetings helped Sircar or his theatre, but the nitty-gritty of the making and the production of Spartacus may be useful in understanding Sircar’s admission that it was instrumental in bringing his theatrical endeavour closer towards the ideology of the Third Theatre.36 By this time, a small group named Silhouette had been performing in the open air for about a year in Surendranath Park (formerly Curzon Park) in the heart of the city, which eventually inspired Satabdi to follow suit at the invitation of the former and invite them in return.37 On 17 March 1973, Satabdi produced at Surendranath Park an abridged, ‘self-contained’ edition of Spartacus—spanning 1 hour and 20 minutes while the duration of the original production was 1 hour and 50 minutes38—without any extraneous theatrical elements. Sircar apprehended that the play’s longer, ‘complex and sophisticated’ version would dispel the uninitiated audience, but his subsequent experience proved his fears to be mistaken.39 Their enthusiastic and unreserved acceptance, on the one hand, and the performers’ fresh engagement in a natural atmosphere, on the other, gave a new dimension to the play, especially to the actors portraying the slaves.40 Sircar was reassured about the new form of performance by the audience’s response. Interestingly, he had always been insistent on claiming that the educated and uneducated audience appreciated his plays alike. There were many instances where he also overstepped in argument to lay stress on the power of comprehension of the so-called uneducated audience. It was nothing more than a deliberate practice to ‘only remember the positive responses’41 in order to validate and convey the message of acceptance of his theatre by means of repetitive assertion and reassurance. We would see in Chapter Six the nature of reception of these plays among the so-called uneducated and rural audience. In the anganmancha period, Sagina Mahato was produced again on 12 November 1972, followed by Ebong Indrajit (17 December 1972).42 Spartacus was their third production in anganmancha (28 January 1973),43 after which Silhouette was invited to produce its play Abritta Dashamik (Recurring Decimal), signifying ‘a theatre movement’ in Sircar’s words.44 He

further stressed that Silhouette’s performance was a manifestation ‘of at least one other’ theatre group’s experimentation in the area of the Third Theatre.45 A little earlier in The Third Theatre, he mentioned the group’s performance as ‘important event in the Third Theatre movement’.46 It is beyond my understanding how Silhouette’s participation at the invitation of Satabdi signifies a theatre movement, and not the other way round. It was Silhouette which had been performing independently for nearly one year, and they had invited Satabdi to perform with them. If their invitation was not construed as a ‘movement’, how can Satabdi’s invitation qualify as such? Second, how can Silhouette’s performance be termed as Third Theatre? It was Sircar, who was looking for a Third Theatre discourse, and not Silhouette. By defining their activities as part of the Third Theatre movement, and claiming the group as ‘at least one other’ in pursuit of that movement, Sircar not only downplayed their achievement, but also tried to appropriate their identity, theatrical discourse, and establish his own ideas as distinct and unique. Interestingly enough, next came Abu Hossain (June 1973). According to Sircar, by that time they had reached a crucial period. Although the inception of anganmancha had coincided with the successful presentation of Ballabhpurer Rupkatha, Sagina Mahato, and Abu Hossain on the proscenium stage,47 most members of Satabdi enthusiastically approved Sircar’s proposal of shifting permanently to the Third Theatre never to return again. But some promising performers objected for fear of losing a bright career in mainstream theatre because in the Third Theatre, there was no hope of fame, fortune, and prosperity. Nonetheless, they discussed the matter within the group, got it over with and decided a formal date for an exodus. Sircar’s manifesto then came in the way: according to it, they were supposed to produce a certain number of plays. If the deadline was to be met with, they would not be able to keep their word. As a way out, Sircar invited another group, Nakshatra, for five consecutive performances of Nayan Kabirer Pala (The Play of Nayan Kabir; a pala is a genre which signifies a narrative song or musical play). Sircar’s Prastab (Proposal, 1973) was produced next, out of ‘necessity’,48 where money was portrayed as an indecent symbol. The proposal of abolishing such a symbol was expressed through improvised speech delivered by one person.49 Innovatively, he performed it solo and tied up on the floor. By virtue of selfless, collective, and honest involvement, all instruments of

inequality and extortion like money, war, weapons, bank, insurance, and police would be inconsequential and superfluous.50 On the basis of this oversimplified premise, not even remotely connected to reality, Sircar ventured into ‘physically … painful’,51 ‘genuine theatre’, without a script, depending on human feelings and communication only.52 It was repeated afterwards, giving way to the production of Muktamela (Open Fair, 1973) on the same structure: absence of script and incorporation of conversation with the audience. The performance was not accepted by the audience.53 In this case, they stepped out of the periphery of the performance area (the room) and stretched it to the dressing room and adjacent terraces also.54 While Prastab was to depict money as an obscene article, Muktamela’s focal point was human bondage to the mechanisms of society and state. The humiliation and restrictions of everyday life were restructured in the unscripted production, where the audience was not allowed to leave before the completion of the shock therapy/treatment. Consequently, in actuality, Open Fair seemed antithetical to its title.55 During the next six performances of Muktamela, Satabdi had prepared itself for Sircar’s forthcoming play, Michhil, which was first put on at Ramchandrapur village in South 24 Parganas on 14 April 1974.56 In the stage directions, Sircar gave a clear instruction that this play should not be presented on the stage, but be performed either in a field surrounded by the audience or on the floor of a sizeable hall, where the sitting arrangement should be made to create a labyrinth of streets; all the actions should take place on these streets and the audience would sit at the sides.57 On 16 April, Michhil was enacted on anganmancha. The final production of anganmancha was Tringsa Satabdi at the Academy of Fine Arts.58 Amidst growing audience response, the group had to move out of the academy by the end of September 1974 because the first term of tenancy was over, and the authority wanted to increase rent by 6 per cent, which Satabdi could not afford. In view of their growing number of performances in the open air, they did not wish to bear the burden of extra rent and a new agreement of tenancy. The properties of free theatre (freedom from money), as conceived by Sircar, became a matter of irresistible attraction to the group.59 In the final section of this chapter, this incident has been discussed further. Following in the footsteps of Silhouette, Satabdi started performing at

Surendranath Park on Saturdays. In the beginning, things were not in perfect order, so the groups decided to perform in rotation. The day 20 July 1974 was like any other Saturday. It was the turn of Silhouette and then that of Satabdi. The political situation was changing under the repressive regime of the INC; all measures were taken to nip every movement against the state in the bud, and imposition of Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code against unlawful assembly was one of them. But nobody could have apprehended that it would turn ominous in the evening. Close to the performing area, some Naxalite groups were addressing an audience, violating the Section 144 rule against public assembly in that area. They were dispersed by the police; some were arrested, while some attacked the police van in retaliation. The performance area could not avert the backlash. In a sudden lathi charge by the police, many spectators were injured and arrested, and 23-year-old theatre worker Prabir Datta died. The post-mortem report said that Datta died of eating rice.60 The theatre community of Calcutta decided to protest against such unprovoked brutality. After a prolonged debate, they organized a protest convention at the University Institute Hall off College Street, the intellectual nerve centre of Calcutta, on the third day after Datta’s death. Michhil was produced jointly at Sircar’s suggestion (performers from other groups participated) at Surendranath Park in the presence of thousands of spectators. After the heinous incident, Satabdi performed there for a few more months, but due to the participation of other groups, their turn came late. They thus decided to start performing on the ground opposite the Academy of Fine Arts on Sundays before a handful of spectators. Bhoma came out in 1975. Sircar informs us of its genesis: I was first acquainted with the Sundarban by Tushar-babu, highschool Headmaster of Rangabelia village. I came to know about Bhoma from him. But there is no story of Bhoma in this play. The push, the wound, the anger I received from watching, learning, and feeling came out in the shape of a play, in fragmentary pictures. Those pieces were collected for three years. Bhoma’s picture then was just one of them. But in assembling those pictures Bhoma’s one became the unifying factor and finally no other title than Bhoma could be attributed to this play. In arranging those fragmented pictures into a play, some members of Satabdi shared their experience and feelings, which have also been included here. In that sense Bhoma is not entirely my creation…. There is no character, no story, no continuity in this play. The performers speak to the audience directly, through word, body.61

Its first performance took place at Rangabelia village of Sundarban on 21 March 1976. Before that, after the declaration of Emergency in 1975, the performances at Surendranath Park were completely stopped, though Satabdi continued its activities on Sundays under the surveillance of mounted police and sleuths. The adventure did not last long; after a warning from the officerin-charge of Park Street police station over the phone, Satabdi stopped performing there.62 The shows were resumed after the withdrawal of Emergency in 1977. Meanwhile, they decided to perform Bhoma, Spartacus, Michhil, Tringsa Satabdi, and Prastab clandestinely at Prajnananda Bhavan of the Theosophical Society, near College Street. The open-air productions at Surendranath Park in the post-Emergency period did not consolidate and had to be stopped after a few Saturdays. Satabdi shifted its base to the present Nandan premises, south of the Academy of Fine Arts, which had become the city’s cultural hub. In between, and after this, they performed in small halls, college and institute grounds, village greens, wherever possible. However, Satabdi did not find it difficult to move ahead with Sircar’s other plays after the initial stages of political uncertainty and financial crises. I shall discuss these in the next chapter. After the success of their first gram parikrama (village tour) in March 1986, Satabdi decided to establish cultural activity in the villages (I shall discuss this period in Chapter Six) and stop performing in Calcutta on a regular basis excepting for a few theatre festivals, though their performances in Calcutta and in the suburban areas continued even after this decision.63 The idea of gram parikrama first occurred to Debasish Chakraborty, founder member of Ritam (1976) and the Angan Theatre Group (1982).64 In an interview with me, he revealed that that on hearing his idea, Sircar was enthusiastic and readily accepted the proposal of village tours. As Chakraborty had many acquaintances in the villages, it was he who established contact with the village representatives, and after that, gram parikrama itineraries were decided. Chakraborty does not want to take the credit, and continues to believe it as a collective process.65 However, Rustom Bharucha rightly assessed Satabdi’s habitual return to the metropolis after those ‘pastoral’ stints: I should add that I am not belittling Sircar’s stand. It is something that he believes in, and more important, something that he practises. What needs to be acknowledged, however, is that there is very little possibility of his work acquiring the momentum or scale of a cultural movement. One cannot cross any of the dominant social, economic, and political barriers by doing theatre in the villages on three-day journeys. Such interactions with under-

privileged communities can be personally illuminating for the actors, even though they could also be exercises in self-deprecation and the romanticization of rural life. Nothing significant is likely to change in our social situation at large without a more sustained interaction between our people in the cities and villages, who continue to be separated from one another.66

In October 1972, Sircar had visited Imphal at the invitation of the Manipur State Kala Akademi to produce three plays: Ebong Indrajit, Ballabhpurer Rupkatha, and Sesh Nei.67 In return, he experienced classical and Manipuri folk dance. In 1973 when he visited Manipur again to conduct a few workshops for three weeks, he acquired the knowledge of Manipuri and Naga folk dance, as also Manipuri Jatra,68 which helped influence the fabric of the Third Theatre, as claimed in The Third Theatre. But how far the traditional culture of Manipur, or of India as a whole, contributed to the fashioning of the Third Theatre will be a matter of contestation and argument that I shall take up in Chapter Six. However, before the Manipur stint, he did not have any experience of conducting workshops outside Calcutta.69 Sircar administered quite a few workshops afterwards across India, in all states except Kashmir, Haryana, Goa, Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim; outside the country, he led them in Pakistan (with Madeeha Gauhar’s Ajoka Theatre), Bangladesh (at Rajshahi University and with an NGO repertory in Dhaka), Great Britain (London, Leeds, Glasgow, Birmingham University, Warwick University, and several other places in England and Scotland),70 and Laos (organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific).71 He had conducted ‘some 60 workshops … both long and short, for large and short [sic] groups’ till August 1992.72 Although the workshops did not help his Third Theatre directly, these undertakings—in his words—spread the ‘movement’ he had initiated: Not only our group Satabdi, some other groups like Pathasena of Kanchrapara, Ayna of Sarsuna, Tirandaj of Krishnanagar—many such groups were also formed during those periods. Even as far as Barak valley [Assam]; this movement was started there also. Well, after several workshops, especially in Tamil Nadu, I perceived this movement. The people who used to attend my workshops took those lessons to the remotest villages, conducted workshops for others there and formulated their own theatre groups. They are still doing this kind of theatre.73

Elsewhere he said: Through the participants, I get connected to a wide network of activities in different areas and feel enriched. For example, in Madras, one of the boys, who works with Dalits, told me that in this street theatre workshop he regained his faith in the force of the Dalit movement, which he feared had been lost with Ambedkar. What more satisfaction can I get out of what I do?74

Like this Dalit boy, one Sister Clare, a Roman Catholic nun, was so inspired by Sircar’s workshop titled ‘Street Theatre’ in Madurai in 1985 that in eight years she conducted nearly 65 workshops herself. Through one of those workshops, Father Britto, another Roman Catholic, was drawn to the movement. Both of them played an important role in spreading street theatre in the distant villages of Tamil Nadu.75 Activists like Purna Chandra Rao (Chalanam, Andhra Pradesh), Shivasanthakumar (KEDS, Tamil Nadu), Debashish Chakrabarty (Aruna Theatres, Calcutta), whom Sircar claimed to be his students, ‘have succeeded in translating the form of street theatre to village productions’.76 Sharing his experience, Rao wrote that street plays were very acceptable to the rural audience, though it was believed to be ‘an urban middle class phenomenon’.77 Jacob Srampickal thought that the main reason for the acceptance of street theatre was the usage of folk techniques.78 Issues in conventional theatrical endeavours like landlordism, moneylenders’ exploitation, corruption, and politics did not go down well with the audience of rural Andhra Pradesh. So, Sircar was invited (in early 1982) and the villagers got involved in his style of communication.79 Again, Srampickal considered Sircar’s medium to be connected with natural elements and techniques of folk performance, but, as already mentioned, historical analysis of his autobiographical narrative and development of the Third Theatre do not reveal that Sircar borrowed those elements essentially from Indian folk tradition. He merely named a few examples and traditions in The Third Theatre that actually had little to do with the formation of the Third Theatre. Moreover, by the time he conceived anganmancha, he had not yet visited those parts of India (except Manipur) which could have revealed their age-old performance traditions to him. Sircar acquired some knowledge about the folk traditions of India as he encountered them on his later travels, but those chance meetings were certainly not enough to have had a major effect on his practice. Readers can remember here Schechner’s comment that Sircar came to know about the importance of Kathakali under his guidance, and brought it

back with him from the USA, though Kathakali’s traces were barely visible in his form. Behind this third-hand transfer of cultural idea, there is another aspect of imparting knowledge of Indian cultural heritage to an Indian cultural exponent, who was not aware of the cultural traditions of his own country. Similarly, the workshops that he conducted were derived much from Western models. While discussing workshops in Britain, Sircar expressed his apprehension about their utility to the British and wrote, ‘Theatre workshops are not new to them. In fact, I learnt first from the West’.80 In an interview, Sircar acknowledged that he had learnt the workshop process from Schechner.81 This may be one reason why villagers do not respond well to theme analysis or other intricate methods of images building as expounded by Sircar. They prefer a clear story line with a narrative form, a plot that moves and appeals. Hence plays with strong contents are more easily adapted to village situations than others that are highly imaginative and display stylized techniques. Adapting the story to the villagers’ own dialect, idioms, phrases and images is of a great importance.82

Srampickal referred to one Nand Kishore, an undergraduate Harijan, teaching at a middle school in Bihar and associated with theatre ‘ever since he could read and write’.83 In spite of being familiar with the plays of Sircar, among others, Nand Kishore believed that it would be difficult for the villagers to comprehend and memorize the lines, although the plays spoke about their problems.84 In his assessment of Sircar’s workshops, Srampickal pointed out Sircar’s dearth of knowledge about villages: In every workshop the initial session is made up of self-introductions and sharing the expectations for the workshop. After that, in the workshop proper, some emphasize techniques and others content. For instance, Sircar’s workshops have been techniqueoriented.… Sircar’s emphasis on abstract techniques, especially in his village workshops, has often been attributed to his lack of contact with the real problems of the villages. Being city-bred, his audience has mostly been the urban middle class.85

The experience of the famous Manipuri director Heisnam Kanhailal, working with Sircar for a few days in 1972 and 1973, is of vital relevance here. In an interview with Samik Bandyopadhyay, he said that Sircar’s emphasis on breaking ‘urban sophistication’ through the exercises seemed futile because in the experience of Manipuri life ‘urbanization’ or ‘urban sophistication’ did not exist. His ‘mirroring games’ and ‘blind games’ were

doubtlessly pleasing, but of no use to them. Kanhailal was of the view that Sircar learnt these from directors like Schechner, who learnt them from indigenous playing methods in other cultures, whereas those games were an inherent part of Manipuri tradition. The aspect of ‘serpentine cruelty’ in Sircar’s style of exercises was also an inherent part of Manipuri tradition. The ‘love’ and ‘cooperation’ professed by Sircar were also not relevant to them because of their unification in, what Kanhailal termed, ‘tribal savagery’. His idea of this ‘savagery’ is ‘vitality’, ‘nobility’, sense of sensuous love, and belonging. Love and cooperation, on the contrary, seemed ‘literary’, lifeless, when heard from Sircar. His reference to ‘rights’ and ‘equality’ had to be incorporated with the Manipuri concept of duty and responsibility. After working with Sircar and exploring his own traditional methods during the process of preparing his actors’ training method, these aspects opened up to Kanhailal, which ultimately compelled him to assess Sircar’s consciousness as tied down to urbanity. Kanhailal thought Sircar wanted to break away from this consciousness, but could not. His ‘self-imposed suffering’ eventually took the form of ‘luxury of pain’ standing in his way to the natural sources of those experiences. Kanhailal wondered if Sircar could engage himself completely in the thorough understanding of the Manipuri lifestyle. Knowing well that he would not, Kanhailal assessed that Sircar was still bound to his urban identity and could not step out of Ebong Indrajit.86 Quite possibly, for all these reasons, on the contrary, participants like Tapas Mukhopadhyay in Calcutta,87 Ishrat Nishat in Dhaka,88 Jo Trowsdale in the UK,89 or theatre activists in Pakistan90 could feel united with the workshop processes: the mutuality, sharing of and participation in a common urban consciousness helped Sircar and his disciples understand one another. Interestingly, the subsequent workshops or theatrical endeavours of Sister Clare or those who participated in Assam (and later formed groups with the Karbis in Haflong, and Cachar or the Hmars in Mizoram91) or Bihar (Patna; later formed groups in Arrah, Bhojpur, and elsewhere92) were not necessarily the duplication of Sircar’s teachings. They carried with them his lessons and translated them into their own cultures, which must have become more understandable to their local audiences. The account of Clare and Britto is distinctly commensurate with this proposition. Unfortunately, I did not find other such documents, which could have helped us prove the theory in general. Sircar’s comment on the workshops conducted in Britain is a little different, yet reveals again his essentially urban constructs: ‘They [the

British] also have many problems, where workshops are fruitful. They are faced with tough competition; in workshops the air of cooperation prevails over competition. That attracts attention.’93 Interestingly, Trowsdale echoed this point when she assessed his workshops in Britain: Badal establishes a context which eradicates competition and facilitates a communal feeling of trust in which people can allow themselves to explore, take risks, be vulnerable. The material for the work is within the people with whom he works. It is searched for, not imposed. The development of the voice of the individuals and group is central to the work. These elements point to a belief in humans as essentially creative.94

Bill McDonnell wants to see Sircar’s workshops in the light of the ideas of mutual interests, common ‘value’ systems, and establishing a ‘dialogue’ process, and not as ‘liberation tools’: In 1986 Badal Sircar, founder and director of the Satabdi Theatre of Calcutta, India, visited Sheffield. During his visit, he ran workshops for Castle Theatre Workshop and Manor Campaign Theatre, two local activist theatres. Here, then, was an international theatre figure, an educated middle class practitioner, working in a damp and cramped community space with 20 poor and unemployed men and women: a mirror image of many Theatre for Development contexts. However, with this important exception: that Sircar had not come to ‘develop’ us: he had no intent upon us: he did not assume, from his class perspective and superior theatre skills, that the unemployed of the Manor needed to be shown how they were oppressed. He did not come to give us ‘liberation tools’. He came to share his work, as an act of recognition, of shared purposes, of shared values, of the necessity for global dialogue. There was nothing there of that western hubris which, says Iraqi ethnographer Prina Mozafi-Haller, assumes that ‘Other people do not know or even notice the very situation of their lives. We do’.95

Trowsdale, on the other hand, wants to see Sircar’s workshop as ‘transformational experience’: In practice, the first learning for me was watching and working with Badal Sircar, an Indian theatre practitioner. Sircar always began with us all in a circle. Here he looked at each and every one of us. Through the work here and in the space, he sought to emphasise our communal identity, our individual responsibility to the whole and thereby the strength of our interrelationships. He trusted the human desire to belong communally and to develop individually. In our physical work he observed where we needed guidance and helped us through a series of what can most easily be described as actor-training exercises and improvisations but which resonated for us with significance. The sensitivity that Sircar

developed within the group was powerful.… Although we had only a brief view of this work, for me and the students alike, this transformational, collaborative psycho-physical process engaged us. Here was a model of actor training, of performance that embraced the holistic values of educational drama and which had been able to teach us about an alternative model of theatre that had tested us in just one short experience. I understand that for the students he worked with over a week, the experience was transformational of their practice.96

While in the narratives of Trowsdale and McDonnell we observe a shared value system, the workshop technique in Rangabelia surely raises some disturbing questions, although, apparently, Bharucha’s description would seem quite similar to those by Trowsdale and McDonnell: among the 25-odd participants in that workshop, half of them were completely ‘illiterate’. Except two or three participants, who could cross the hurdle of matriculation examination, the rest dropped out after third or fourth grade, on account of intense poverty. In the beginning, Sircar thought that he would not be able to establish communication with them, but within a couple of days, he associated himself with them on the foundation of faith, admiration, and reverence for each other. He took no interest in teaching them ‘how to act’. In order to make them ‘realize’ the power of their ‘interrelations as people’, Sircar ‘improvised situations and games’ as a spontaneous display of invention. The participants of Sundarban reciprocated instinctually and ‘as members of a community’. In the workshop, which included playwriting as the creative part, the only condition of writing a play within 10 minutes was ‘imposed’ on them. According to Bharucha, Sircar was much surprised by their ‘writings’. In place of making use of commonplace ideas and the ‘rhetoric of local jatra’, which, Sircar had presumed would have the strongest effect on them, the participants ‘wrote’ about the events of their life ‘in a colloquial, often nonverbal idiom’. As an alternative to the invented subjects and characters, they chose to focus on the particularities of day-to-day activities with utmost precision.97 Sircar’s search for the voice of the workshop participants is well established in Bharucha’s elaborate description, which also suggests that in the workshop at Rangabelia, he did not control the discourses of those ‘uneducated’ inhabitants of Sundarban maintaining an objective distance, but at the same time presided over the complete trajectory. With his typical modesty,98 Sircar would grow an association with them on the foundation of faith, admiration, and reverence for each other, and become their voluntary

educator. He would feel the compunction to impart his teachings for his own purpose—as part of experimentation with his own form of theatre—and then project them as educative measure to help them ‘realize’ the power of their ‘interrelations as people’, whereas his own limited knowledge of rural communality was largely theoretical and bookish. This kind of colonial mindset is further reflected in the repudiation of ‘local jatra’, as can be seen on other occasions as well. One might challenge the validity of the intrusive and interfering nature of this kind of rejection and criticisms by a sophisticated, amateur visitor, whose idea of Indian folk tradition was practically meagre and imported to a large extent. Moreover, it is not clear why Bharucha emphasized words like ‘writings’ and ‘wrote’. What did he try to convey? His own understandings (evaluation) of ‘their’ writing skills borrowed from Sircar, or his own belief? Is this kind of progressive assessment unimpeachable, and does it not strengthen the invisible wall between the urban–rural consciousnesses? This apparently illuminating description surely raises many such unpleasant questions. Bharucha further suggested, ‘Sircar’s playwriting workshop with the villagers might have been more useful had each individual’s play been altered by all the participants. There is a great deal to be learned from discussing a play as a community….’99 It must have been ‘useful’ to Sircar or academic like Bharucha, but not to the people of Rangabelia because their sense of collectivity/communality was/is more powerful than that of either of them. I would like to mention here categorically that I do not intend to essentialize the consciousness of the people of Rangabelia, but certainly object to the interfering nature of amateurish evaluation process and teaching method. Such prying academic adventurism does not yield anything except for showing off cerebral prowess. Without taking the larger perspective of the development of colonialism and capitalism into consideration, one cannot evaluate the identity and consciousness of the people and folk culture. Sircar’s interaction with the sex workers of Sonagachi, in the heart of Calcutta, is not beyond question either. During 1998–9, Sircar voluntarily associated himself with Komal Gandhar, the cultural wing of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), which is devoted to establish the rights of the sex workers. In his two/three-year stint, Sircar gave them acting lessons besides preparing a couple of plays based on the real-life incidents of the sex workers, their dream, despair, and aspirations. After the preparation

(writing process) of the play, when the participation of the sex workers was substantial, their involvement in rehearsals started diminishing. Their lack of punctuality and involvement became the reason for Sircar’s exasperation and impatience. Eventually, the attendance of the participants started falling off and their children filled the places, though the initial entrants took part in the final productions of the plays written by Sircar. In the meantime, he addressed the issue of attendance and punctuality to the participants as well as to Smarajit Jana, the founder of DMSC, but things did not look up, which led to Sircar’s separation from Komal Gandhar.100 In tune with Sircar, Jana is also critical of the participants’ sense of punctuality and responsibility and thinks that their disillusionment might have occurred, as the participants’ aspiration to perform elsewhere and to gain fame did not come to fruition. In Jana’s words, Sircar insisted on the ‘commitment’ of the participants so that they could attract the audience and effectively convey their message through theatre. Sircar was not happy with the lack of ‘hard work and commitment’.101 Having accepted this problem, Geeta Mandal, Pramila Singh, and Putul Singh—participants in Sircar’s project—mentioned that their involvement with the ‘customers’, or in DMSC’s work, had resulted in the alleged lack of commitment.102 They were full of praise for getting the lesson of punctuality from Sircar, but asking for ‘commitment’ and ‘hard work’ for theatre from those wretched sex workers, who are/were probably the worst sign of patriarchy, and expressing displeasure at their irregularity without understanding their existential crises were similar to the monstrous bourgeois concept of righteousness—a myth full of inherent contradictions and fabrications. In Chapter One, we have seen Amritalal Basu’s admiration for the prostitutes’ work ethics. For him, it was a necessity to ‘take on some actresses’, whereas in Sircar’s case, it was a voluntary enterprise. Like Rangabelia and elsewhere, he wanted to experiment with (the sex workers of) Sonagachi. When he was faced with an unexpected obstacle called ‘punctuality’, he chose to retreat. For obvious reasons, his urban, sober, and so-called learned ‘students’ never disappointed him, and the workshops with them were devoid of such complexities/problems. I should like to mention here that when the term of two years of our tenancy of the room in the Academy of Fine Arts building was over, there was a demand of increased rent. We probably could have afforded it, but we let it go and geared ourselves completely to open

air performances….103

Irresistible attraction towards open-air performances is revealed in this statement. The decision had been glorified, celebrated, and magnified by Sircar many a time afterwards. He surely had reasons to eulogize and exult in the ‘glory’ of his idea of reaching out to the audience, but almost in the same breath, he claimed, ‘I personally feel more at home in Anganmancha.… [I]t gives something in terms of intensity of communication, which I cannot have in open-air. At the same time open-air performances allow us to go where the people are, and that almost overcompensates what we get in the “anganmancha” productions.’104 The appetite for ‘intense’ creativity and people’s beckon seem to have been a matter of irresistible attraction to Sircar, which also troubled him105 in his balancing act between the two forms of performance. Apparently, a dialogue is established between the intensely artistic and ‘social’106 Sircar, but it also manifests his vacillating tendency. Satabdi’s theatre practice of this period appears to be a journey to the openness, as envisaged by Sircar, which in course turned out to be a convention of coming out of and going in to the closed-door, exclusive, and intense performances in anganmancha for the ‘urban middle class people—a minority in the society no doubt, but an important minority, and moreover they are people he knows intimately’,107 while its open-air performances became a social and moral responsibility: impeding a possibility of conversation between the two forms. They exist on separate levels, as antithesis, only to be accessed, discovered, appreciated, criticized, adopted, rejected, and discussed by the intellectually stimulated gentry. Synthesis? Only a matter of distant chance. Despite his repeated denial of going back to the proscenium-scape, Sircar found comfort in those ‘intimate’, ‘intense’ areas of activity. What should be the language of nataka? Bharata said, ‘gurhashabdarthaheenang, janapadasukhabhogyang’.108 Though Sircar claimed to bring social change through theatre by means of reaching out to the common people, the language of his theatre was never easy for all classes of spectators and lacked the quality of ‘janapadasukhabhogyang’. We have seen a few examples in this regard; more will be dealt with in Chapter Six.

Five VOICES IN UTOPIA, IN PURSUIT OF DREAMS

Beyond the Cityscape. (From L to R) Sandip Saha, Dipankar Datta, Shanta Datta, and Ratna Ghosal in Hattamalar Opare during a gram parikrama. Production: Satabdi, n.d.; (official) direction: Badal Sircar. Source: A former theatre worker.

[T]here is no promised land for the oppressed people of the world. There is no place over the horizon to which they can go for sanctuary. They must stand, and we must stand….1

In this chapter, I analyse the printed texts of Sircar’s plays that belong to the Third Theatre period. Sagina Mahato (1970) was a brilliant critical review of the communist movement in West Bengal. More so, because the communists either maintain silence or brush aside the embarrassing chapters of the party’s history. It cannot be denied that before 1977, when the Left Front government finally came to power in West Bengal, the Leftists had suffered an irreparable number of scathing blows from the opposition, but it is also true that within the Left politics, there grew elements that were anything but Marxist. Sagina Mahato is a documentation of that hypocrisy. Though an adaptation, presumably, the play was written keeping in mind the political situation in 1970. ANUPAM: Did you ever try to make Gora understand the importance of this election? There is a possibility of the Left forming the government; not just a strong opposition, but true ministry—state power.2

The party, which vowed to eradicate reformism from the inner circuit, is depicted here as an instrument to woo the politically naive tea-garden workers by its operatives. Instead of organizing a mass movement to meet the demands of the workers, the cadres were bent on giving the union a strong footing in the remote tea estate3 by appropriating the unpolished voice of the overpowering Sagina. ANUPAM: What do you mean what Gora had to do there? He was on the wrong track right from the beginning. He was supposed to build up the party by using the power of Sagina. What did he do?4

At his suggestion of beating up the authority and calling a strike in order to meet their demands for equal pay, increment, dearness allowance, paid leave, medical expenses, and decent living conditions, Anupam, one of the party leaders, contests that those statements are typical of a lumpen proletariat.5 With a view to establishing the rule of the trade union, the party leadership think a strike, which was considered to be one of the strongest weapons of the

working class, would not serve their interest. Instead, they focus more on paperwork, no matter how long the suffering of the workers continued.6 Soon their strategy transforms a ‘brute’, ‘uncivilized’ Sagina into a ‘sober’, ‘presentable’ labour welfare officer, whose job is to maintain a good rapport with the authority, although he is supposed to look after the workers’ welfare. BISAKHA: You will be surprised to see him today, as if a new man altogether. And he really looks good in a suit.7

The party intends to steal his contentious voice and class identity, separate him from the working class, and spread its own spell on the innocent (that is, unaware of the economics of organized parliamentary politics) workers. In order to fulfil this mission and show their achievements of establishing a unit in a remote tea estate by dint of Sagina’s overpowering personality, the party needs to root out Sagina from among his people and project him at provincial and all-India conferences as their product. ANUPAM: You see, Jatin, Sagina’s story can be used in the labour front. Very inspiring—I mean a labour hero like Sagina is our party product. Didn’t you see the ovation he received at the provincial conference? This time he should also be taken to the All-India conference.8

When Kajiman, a party member, doubts this line of action,9 Bisakha, who is placed to tailor Sagina to the needs of the party, but actually whose sexuality is put to use to entice Sagina into their plan (Bijan says, ‘Bishakha won’t change. Anyway—she’s a very capable girl. She is useful’),10 replies that there is no reason to confine Sagina to that sort of a small place. He is needed for the all-India workers’ union.11 But the workers’ situation remains the same; no substantial improvement is seen: Mahadeo says, ‘Oh! What about those demands? Salary, dearness allowance, etc.?’12 A little later, Kajiman, having left the party, tells Gora that the party and its members had spoilt Sagina by promoting him as the labour welfare officer and uprooting him from his own soil. Simultaneously, Kajiman is forced to convert the workers’ union into a party wing. The party’s projection of Sagina as a heroic figure is more significant than the tea-garden company’s conspiracy to put him behind bars, thought Kajiman.13 When the party secretly acts for its own interests, Sagina raises questions about the utility of his all-India tours and the unchanged condition of the workers.14 After being beaten up by fellow

workers, Sagina confesses to Gora, ‘They have beaten me. Beaten me a lot. But—they did the right thing. I understand—I—cheated them. Yes, cheating. I understand completely…. But comrade, I was trapped. I could not understand. In the name of workers’ welfare they made a monkey of me.’15 He pledges to reconstruct their union, which had become defunct by that time.16 The play concludes with the workers’ acceptance of Sagina as their leader again and their reunion. Although an excellent play, the main problem lies with the indefinite identity of the ‘party’. Which party was subjected to criticism? Was it the CPI, Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI[M]), Forward Bloc (Marxist), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), or any other party in West Bengal? Or is the play a critique of the communist movement in India as a whole? We do not know. His experience of corruption of the CPI leadership, and constraints to work with them after knowing their exploits, complemented the narrative of Gourkishore Ghosh.17 However, one can argue that its premise does not allow it to emerge as a text of the sufferings of all the workers (Sagina being just one example), and so it remains fettered within an individual approach. If we accept this as a limitation, Sircar seems to have corrected it in Spartacus (1972), in which the most important role is played by a group of slaves, not by one slave.18 Spartacus might have been killed, the slaves had perished, but their struggle did not die, they could not perish. Spartacus is the struggle epitomized. He and the thousands of murdered slaves are the symbols of human strife against all odds, repression of all nature. The struggle of the oppressed must continue, that is the lesson of Spartacus’ life, his struggle and sacrifice. In that sense, every common struggler is a descendant of Spartacus. Sircar wanted to emphasize these aspects in his play derived from Howard Fast’s novel of the same name. To him, Spartacus was not a conventional hero. He could be perceived as any slave in any time frame. To emphasize these aspects, the importance was on a ‘group of slaves’. The group of the slaves and that of the Roman soldiers were ‘prototypes than characters’.19 In the preface to the play, Sircar wrote that he had thought of producing the novel on the stage a few times, but could not dare to. Eventually, when he developed anganmancha, the adaptation of Spartacus came to fruition as his first play conceptualized for anganmancha. Later, it was presented in an open field, in front of an audience of 8,000 people at a village in the Sundarban. Sircar said that the adaptation brought

him such joy that he could not have felt even after writing three original plays.20 Spartacus was a landmark in his career and for his group as a team. The initial version was a 4-hour-long text, which was condensed through workshops and rehearsals with the dialogues leading up to non-verbal expressions. Besides having an immense impact on Sircar’s attempt at finding a space for a closer relationship with the audience,21 the play struck a chord ideologically, culminating in a sudden fanciful idea/suggestion of the rise and emergence of the slaves. Suitcase (1972) is set in 1942, the year of the Quit India Movement. After director Anthony Asquith’s 1964 film, The Yellow Rolls-Royce, Sircar wanted to write three plays against three different periods using the motif of a suitcase.22 But he could only manage to juxtapose an idealist fugitive revolutionary (Shyamal) with a self-seeking married couple (Abani and Parul), who happened to be his friends. With the progression of the play, the suitcase becomes a silent, yet important character through which the past romantic association of Shyamal and Parul, Abani’s renouncement of insurrectionary ideas, his ‘advancement’ in career, and Shyamal’s adherence to his subversive ideology are revealed. However, Sircar’s five-page miniplay Bij (The Seed, 1973), fails in its attempt to register a message of resuscitation within the vortex of temporality.23 Sircar’s next masterpiece, Michhil (1974) does not have a definite plot; it is a journey in search of the ‘true’ procession. A michhil is a sign of defiance, resistance, rights, earning respect, and meeting demands. But this play pronounces the futility of all processions—processions for food and clothing, revolutionary processions, military processions, refugee processions, relief processions, condolence processions, protest processions, festive processions, even film-festival inaugural processions—in a derisive tone24 because of their ‘multicoloured’, ‘multifaced’, ‘multisonant’ nature. I am lost in the colours of the flags of the procession, in the noise of the footsteps of the procession; wandering being lost; returning being lost. I have been wandering, getting lost, and returning, in the lanes, streets, public thoroughfares, and crossings—but can’t find the way home. The road to the true home, real, true home. Where is that procession which will show the road? Real, true procession?25

The play revolves around this central unanswered question. We start thinking: what is this real, true procession? What is the concept of ‘real, true

home’? Why are other processions not true, real? What is the basis of truth or reality? The prophet-like Old Man curses: ‘All of you are getting lost, to hell with searching.’26 What does he mean by searching? KHOKA:27 I am murdered. I am dead. OLD MAN: No, you are not dead. You are lost. Like me. KHOKA: All the same! OLD MAN: Same? But if lost can be searched out; if searched can be found out. Can it be found out after death? Can it be found out if not searched? … KHOKA: Why didn’t you die? OLD MAN: Cannot die. Cannot search after death. … KHOKA: Will we search together? OLD MAN: Wide gap. Can it be? KHOKA: Don’t know. Will we search? OLD MAN: Let’s see. … OLD MAN: (Suddenly) Silent! (The Old Man stares outside. A feeble sound is coming from there.) KHOKA: What? OLD MAN: Probably coming. KHOKA: Who’s coming? OLD MAN: Procession. (The sound is becoming louder.) KHOKA: What procession? OLD MAN: The procession which will show the road. The road to home. KHOKA:: (Wearily) I have seen many processions. None show the way. All are one way, one— OLD MAN: Silent! Listen. (Excitement in the Old Man’s voice. The sound is getting louder.) It is coming. KHOKA: (A little hopeful) True? True procession? OLD MAN: I think—true procession. KHOKA: Whose procession? OLD MAN: I think—of human beings.28

It is difficult to realize what made earlier processions devoid of human beings, and the Old Man’s desired procession an event involving them. What

does Khoka mean by ‘I have seen many processions. None show the way’? Does he mean to say that those processions ultimately become ceremonial, led by a few with vested interests and followed either by like-minded enthusiasts or the hapless toiling class? Once a member of the (parliamentary) Left politics, Sircar might have lost all faith in the democratic means of protest and resistance, but that does not necessarily render those efforts as futile in a capitalist democracy, though some may see in them a combination of lacklustre religion and politics and incessant agitations spilling over into contemporary Indian life.29 Samik Bandyopadhyay noted, ‘The irony implicit in the choice of slogans as abstractions is in the suggestion of historical trends and tendencies degenerating almost immediately into dehumanized, vacuous, verbiage-dead words’.30 It is true that the period chosen by Sircar in this play was a crucial one, both in provincial and national politics. We have to read Michhil, and all of Sircar’s Third Theatre plays, against the background of political and social discordance, and not merely as postcolonial by-products. The first United Front government—comprising the United Left Front (ULF, consisting of the CPI [M], RSP, Forward Bloc [Marxist], Revolutionary Communist Party of India [RCPI], Samyukt Socialist Party [SSP], Socialist Unity Centre of India [SUCI], and the Workers’ Party of India [WPI]) and the People’s United Left Front (PULF, consisting of the CPI, Bangla Congress, Forward Bloc, and Bolshevik Party of India)—came into power in 1967 in West Bengal. Though the ULF and the PULF could not join hands before the elections, on the basis of the 32-point programme, after the election, they forged the United Front government. After the withdrawal of support by 18 legislators, the Ajay Mukherjee–led coalition government was dissolved by the governor on 21 November. On securing the support of the INC, the Bangla Congress leader Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, who was the minister of food in the United Front government, was invited to form the government. The political scenario remained as unstable and unpredictable as before. Political murders, meetings, strikes, inflation, food and grain shortage, hoarding, black marketing, profiteering, campaigning, countercampaigning, conspiracy against the government, and outcry of the opposition, continued as before. Meanwhile, the speaker of the assembly also declared the new government as unconstitutional within a few days of its

formation. On 20 February 1968, the Prafulla Chandra Ghosh government resigned following strong resistance from the opposition and the speaker’s resolute and unswerving stance. From the day of his resignation, President’s rule was imposed in West Bengal, which continued for more than a year (from 20 February 1968 to 25 February 1969). Meanwhile, a new trend in Left politics emerged as a challenge to both the Right- and Left-wing parties: Naxalism, which was described as ultra-Left extremism. The ideological question, to be or not to be a part of the (bourgeois) parliamentary democracy, had haunted the Left for decades. At the Calcutta party congress (1964) of the CPI, resistance was dealt with and rejected on account of the critics’ silence on the participation of feudal-class representatives in the democratic process, misjudgement of the elements of bourgeois government, inability to differentiate between democracy and fascism, depiction of all non-Congress-led cabinets and their participation in the electoral system as revisionism, and so on. The party congress also noted that the arguments against the democratic process were based on the hypothetical assumption that the bourgeoisie in Indian politics were agents of imperialism, without taking the strength of bourgeois agents into consideration, the mass support behind them, and the existing class relationships. The scourge of political clashes, abductions, assassinations by Naxals empowered with moral and other logistic support from different sources, and repressive measures by the state machinery in reply terrorized the populace. An interim election was called against the backdrop of such unrest in 1969, in which the ULF swept to power, for the second time, but to last only for 13 months. On 16 March 1970, the chief minister of the coalition government, Ajay Mukherjee, resigned, and on 19 March, President’s Rule was imposed that lasted another year. Amidst escalating violence and inter-party clashes, the election was called in March 1971. Again, the ULF (CPI[M], RCPI, WPI, Forward Bloc [Marxist], Biplabi Bangla Congress, and Bolshevik Party) emerged as the prospective force to form a new government, but, surprisingly, the governor invited Ajay Mukherjee of the Bangla Congress (this time not supporting the ULF) to form the next government. Support came from the INC, CPI, Forward Bloc, and Muslim League, but the fate of this coalition had already been decided. Disagreement among the allies began surfacing to such an extent that the assembly had to be dissolved on 25 June 1971, and President’s Rule was

imposed on 29 June for one more time, which continued till 19 March 1972, with no announcement of the next date for elections. Bowing down to immense pressure from the opposition, 11 March 1972 was fixed as the next date for the election; this showed that hooliganism and terror had become an everyday affair, with even state security agencies taking part in the whole process before the election, followed by a farcical electoral procedure: vote rigging, booth jamming, booth capturing, influencing or threatening the polling and counting officers, and tampering with the ballot papers and boxes. Unrest continued even after the election and the INC assuming power. In national politics also, the situation grew bleak as the INC lost popularity. On 12 June 1975, in its verdict Allahabad High Court declared that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would not be allowed to contest from Raebareli constituency. On the same day, the result of the Gujarat state assembly election was declared. The INC was defeated. Amidst fastincreasing popular anger, protests, and mass movements, on 26 June, a very insecure Mrs Gandhi declared Emergency in India. All hell broke loose for nearly two years as democracy was disgraced in every sphere by despotic rule. Every political activity was banned, even the leaders of the INC were ordered not to speak publicly; thus Mrs Gandhi prepared the burial ground for the INC’s internal democracy. Several repressive laws were brought into force throughout the country, simultaneous with random incarcerations. Instead of proper trials, the detained and arrested were brutally tortured in jail. Setting aside constitutional rights, not only were parliamentary procedures tampered with by the power of majority in the parliament, but the term of the 5th Lok Sabha was also extended from five to six years, after the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution. Freedom of the press was repressed, while industrialists were blatantly favoured. In such circumstances, when the opposition had no hope of elections before 1978, all of a sudden Mrs Gandhi declared elections in 1977 and inadvertently sealed her fate. After ruling the country for three decades, the INC was routed and the Janata Dal, with its allies, won absolute majority in the 6th Lok Sabha, while in West Bengal the Left Front swept to power in the assembly election. It was a historic moment in post-Independence Indian politics. To understand the significance of this momentous change we have to go back a little further. The very process of forming the largest possible nationalist alliance against colonial power, Partha Chatterjee argues, lacked an all-out assaultive strength. A path was chosen in such a manner that the interests of the old

dominant classes did not remain completely unprotected. In order to create a politically independent nation state, tactics of alliance (both within the organizational structure and amongst the bourgeoisie and prominent classes of society) and mobilization of the minor classes were engineered so that neither the colonial ‘institutional structures of “rational” authority’ were broken and altered, nor were the ‘pre-capitalist dominant classes’ harmed. This kind of passive revolutionary method sought to redefine the former discourse at its own will and necessity.31 When India emerged as a free nation, its ‘innate’ passivity could not dispense with the bourgeois elements overlapping with the pre-capitalist property relations. Prabhat Patnaik reasoned out that the bourgeoisie of the twentieth century with its late appearance in the historical domain maintained a sort of liaison (or ran parallel) with the earlier capitalist structure for fear of being attacked leading to insignificant land reforms32 and immobility of the masses.33 The ‘ancien régime’34 of Nehru achieved the objective of giving its ‘reformistic’ programmes a bureaucratic rather than ‘mobilizational’ form35 by pretending to maintain a verbal allegiance and commitments to (create) Socialism,36 on the one hand, and submission to feudal resistance, judicial conservatism, and collusion of state Congress leadership,37 on the other hand. These impediments could have been warded off had the newly formed government concentrated on mass mobilization; instead, it tethered its own movements.38 What seems ‘demobilization’ now was an instrument for consolidating power and initiating industrialization of the private sector.39 And in the specific pattern of state interventionism, Atul Kohli perceived the preservation of political power of a nationalist–reformist leadership.40 A weak INC had, however, struck ‘compromises reached by the new leadership in the creation of a consolidated polity’ that ‘further weakened the interventionist capacities of the new Indian state’.41 The complicity of this section, industrial and commercial classes, and the professional and bureaucratic groups helped amass wealth of disproportionate amount in the hands of a particular section, while ‘the lower classes did not gain much from this pattern of political intervention’.42 Not only did the development strategy preclude any egalitarian redistribution of assets, including land, but, what is more, in the course of its pursuit, the bourgeois, protobourgeois, and landlord classes actually used the state to augment their share in output; a process that can only be described as ‘primary accumulation of capital’. The state was thus

called upon to simultaneously fulfil two different roles. On the one hand, it had to maintain growing expenditure, in particular investment expenditure, in order to keep the domestic market expanding. At the same time, since it was an instrument for primary accumulation of capital, its exchequer became the medium through which large-scale transfers were made to the capitalist and proto-capitalist groups.43

In the countryside, landlords and rich peasants became the beneficiaries of limited land reform measures as part of the development plan44 evolved after the colonial legacy.45 On the contrary, there was no such mechanism so as to further the interests of the lower/landless class. As a result, despite numerous legislation and policy-making, their situation did not change much, while the abolition of the zamindari system, the re-emergence of landlordism through the politically significant new class of landowners, and political consolidation of a new group of rulers/leaders were made possible.46 With the emerging character of artificiality in Indian nationalism during the 1960s, the inconsistencies of Nehruvian policies began surfacing. ‘Nationalist hysteria’ that played a catalytic role in uniting the far Rightists with the ‘reformist’, moderate, and soft Lefts and fending off the communists became weaker soon after the death of Nehru,47 although the indications of colonial style of governance were prominent much before his demise. The residual symptoms of colonialism, Samaddar discerns, can be observed in the act of stamping out the Telangana movement in 1951 and a decade later in repressive measures against the communists during 1962–5, signalling a tendency towards ‘post-coloniality’.48 The idea of giving importance to language as the basis of constructing provincial boundaries, in his opinion, ‘was itself a reminder that recognition of nationalities and federalisation of polity were going to be fundamental challenges to the permanent task of defining the polity’.49 Further, the closeness with the USA during 1958–65, the termination of Agricultural Trade Development Assistance Act or the Public Law 480 with India, the war with China on border disputes, the devaluation of Indian currency, stagnation of industrialization, and agricultural crises coupled with rampant food riots rendered Indian democracy its pre-Independence attributes.50 The defeat in the 1962 IndoChina war put the country face to face with reality: its actual strength. It did not stop until the 1965 war against Pakistan, when the theory of masculinity —which had already gained national momentum by then—got further impetus.51 It was in this decade that an anti-Pakistan, more importantly anti-

Muslim, sentiment took hold of the common psyche.52 ‘War became one more phase in state-formation on the subcontinent; and riots became another phase in redefining the nation.… Borders acquired an inviolable sanctity through two wars. Henceforth, borders were to define “territorial integrity” as the chief marker of the nation; these and not a participating citizenry became the nation’s soul.’53 It is no wonder that when the issue of migration loomed large, it was dealt with violence, mass murder, and exclusion. A new definition of ‘other’ in the political order concerning the nation and its constituents was created by the projection of a dichotomy between ‘the citizen and the alien’.54 The position of the immigrants was a volatile one: initially, if a place for refuge was managed, they were holed up; and, over a long period of time, these outcasts’ lives were channelled into the flow of the citizens’ lives by luck or by some political interventions. However, the period after Nehru was one of deepening instability at the centre and considerable stabilization of the Left forces in India. T.V. Sathyamurthy observed that the Congress took to double-dealing by striving to restore its public image and simultaneously engaging in a strong programme of purging popular unrest, overthrowing popularly elected state governments, and pulverizing communist forces in the name of protecting Indian unity, integrity, and security from internal and external threats.55 It was, in fact, during this period that the practice was begun of the central organization of the party [Congress] imposing its own nominees for the Chief Ministership of Congressruled states and of changing their incumbents at will. At the same time, the practice of democratic election of office-bearers at various levels within the party was brought to an indefinite standstill. Thus even though the immediate reason behind the 1969 crisis within the party was provided by intra-party differences over who should be the Congress nominee in the presidential election (1969), the organizational changes initiated during the 1969–70 period were to have far-reaching effects on the internal working of the Congress party, on the role of the Indian state in dealing with legitimate opposition, and on the role of the Indian Constitution and the machinery of government established under its provisions.56

While the Left outfits were integrating more and more, rift within the ruling party became wider day by day. Factionalism, groupism, and dissidence became obvious and the coterie of the prime minister’s confidants was entrusted with enormous power.57 The Pradesh Congress organizations

and their leaders (excepting a few) were made inoperative, and a huge amount of black money ‘became the engine through which such a basic transformation of the Congress organization was achieved in such a brief period of time’.58 Instead of arresting the channels and sources of such illegal cash transactions, the Congress encouraged those opportunistic leaders who made money with ‘the right contacts with black market barons’, expanding its strength by purchasing support.59 Thus, within barely three decades, the country run by the authoritarianism of a single party was shrouded in a deep sense of hopelessness.60 In the assembly elections of 1977, the majority of voters saw an opportunity for liberation and emancipation from their excluded status from the pulse of national democracy. While the newly formed Left Front government triggered hope and spirit among the masses, it was still unable to spread influence among a section of orthodox, aggressive, hard-liner communists. The dissident communists were either active members of the extremist fraternity or just supporters of the risky road towards the formation of a ‘true’ people’s government. First the undivided CPI and then the CPI(M) came under their severe criticisms. It is historically true that the Lefts of this country have maintained a sweet-and-sour relationship with the Congress from the colonial period, in spite of being ‘representatives’ of the people. But the cordiality between the last delegates of the British empire and the first leaders-to-be of two neighbouring countries was so vibrant that the CPI ‘frequently trailed behind the Congress’.61 Afterwards, its coalition/collaboration strategies,62 anti-mass movement policies,63 pro-bourgeois mentality,64 and inner-party struggles,65 could not help consolidate all sections of the communists. Whether everybody can be satisfied in any system is a matter of contention, but, historically, the communist movement in India lacked unifying policies relating to the formation of a socialist and later communist state. The reasons for the ‘left deviation’, ‘extremism’, and ‘romantic adventurism’ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) or CPI(M-L)66 can be found in this history of their predecessors’ limitations. In order to fight the Left ‘revisionism’, Charu Mazumdar advocated for the strategies of spontaneous militancy: seizure of arms and area-wise power, annihilation of individuals, guerrilla warfare without caring much for, as Kanu Sanyal observed later, the flexibility in dealing with the United Front government and the

implementation of ‘a carefully planned programme for creating a powerful mass base with a well organized guerrilla armed force’.67 Partha Chatterjee rightly considered all these to be major limitations, which were countered with massive state brutality, and ‘contributed to the worst fratricidal warfare in the history of the Indian Communist movement. The result was a severe setback to the entire democratic and revolutionary movement in the state [West Bengal].’68 In spite of this, the Left Front government was successful in capitalizing on the mass anger and a sense of hopelessness against the Centre, and the abhorrence of Left extremism in West Bengal in 1977 and afterwards. Michhil is a documentation of that restless, anxious, unhappy moment, when the Old Man and Khoka are seen to be waiting for a true michhil, which will show them the way to a new and true home. Besides expressing hopelessness, it also snubs the mass movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which had a decisive role in the political turnaround of 1977. The reason for the outright rejection of and disbelief in democratic protest movements might have developed from Sircar’s ultra-Left leanings and intimacy with some disillusioned youth, inspired by the Naxalite ideology, during this period (see Chapter Seven). But if we overlook the impact of the resistance movements within and without democratic institutions, the analysis would be fallacious. However, like Spartacus, this play also ends in the materialization of a fantastic dream—a dream of ‘human procession’, which ultimately arrives. Lakshmichharar Panchali (Ballads of the Wretched, 1974) is about a group of village performers sitting and reciting their everyday ordeals: how they were extorted by the usurer and the owners (jotdar) of the proprietary agricultural farm; and their deprivation as sharecroppers, unemployment, starvation, competitiveness of the open market, injustice of law and order. From their dirge, it seems that Lakshmichharar Panchali is a continuation of Michhil, written for the city audience about conditions in the villages, a little before the declaration of Emergency throughout the country. At one place in the text, Khuro (again, an Old Man) says, ‘If it is unjust, there are police, police stations, courts. The queen rules the country.’69 The word ‘queen’ surely targets Indira Gandhi, whose rule threw India into a state of lawlessness and oligarchy that favoured the rich and the industrialists. The conversation ends with the conclusion that if the market system of buying

and selling could be dispensed with, life would be based on sharing, not on cash transactions. Thus, a true humanity will emerge.70 The play—intended for the urban audience, but more accepted and appreciated by the rural spectators because of its theme, according to Sircar71—sounds romantic and utopian in its abrupt final message: PACHA: … What is the use of market? What is buying–selling? Why is money, property? … Why would we be slave to money? … We would consume by sharing and sharing alike. … We would labour as much as possible, … take according to our necessity … what would we get in buying–selling? … What is the use of accumulating wealth? … We would build homes abolishing police stations police bank courts … We would again be human beings.72

Rupkathar Kelenkari (Scandal in Fairyland, 1974) is a light comedy written for outdoor performance, which may easily be passed off as a children’s play, but its references to the Indian political scenario, crisis of democracy, and misuse of freedom of the press make it a serious text. Sircar said, ‘[I]t’s so hard to write for children…. Whatever is thematically valuable in my play came from this story. The paperboy, however, was my improvisation. If I had written it for children, I could not have used the idiom of the popular press so extensively.’73 An adaptation of a story for children written by Premendra Mitra, Rupkathar Kelenkari is also sarcastic about the children’s education system —a mix of binary opposite ideas of good–bad, vice–virtue, politeness– impoliteness, etc.—handed down from the colonial period.74 In its open-air performances, the actors were easily transformed into fairyland characters with plain labels on their back indicative of the identities of the characters.75 Taking the cue from Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author and its famous Bengali adaptation by Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay of Nandikar,76 Sircar wrote Natyakarer Sandhane Tinti Charitra (Three Characters in Search of a Playwright)77 in 1974. Although the idea is not original, Sircar definitely gave the concept of searching for an author a new dimension. Here, three characters—The Costly, The Middling, and The Cheap78—are searching for a playwright to pen their voices. The Costly wants the playwright to write a play to fight the ‘colossal ignorance of the general public’;79 otherwise, he thinks, India will never be able to achieve its due in the world. He is of the opinion that the citizens are not conscious of

the economic crises in the country, so they resolve to call strikes and gheraos, which, to him, are like sabotage, at the instigation of foreign countries. These strikes and gheraos only deepen the crises, he asserts. Referring to one incident of the immigration of thousands of villagers to Calcutta, and the government’s vaccination drive to protect footpath-dwellers against cholera and smallpox, The Costly deduces that the whole episode was retrogressive to India’s economy. To boost that faltering economy, he even advocates making a few nuclear bombs. Though he has newspapers and magazines, and has chosen columnists, essayists, and literati to propagate and circulate his ‘philosophy’, he needs the dramatist because, he thinks, one does not require education or literacy to understand acting, which will be the easiest means to eradicate the enormous ignorance of the general public. The Middling professes a play that will awaken the class of The Cheap containing the unified force of struggle. No sooner does he start lecturing on the importance of knowing the class division in a bourgeois society, the development of capitalism, and the present condition of feudalism in the semi-colonial Indian society, than The Costly breaks in and masters him with an alluring job proposal. The champion of mass movement accepts the proposal of The Costly and leaves hurriedly—blabbering on the importance of educating people on their democratic and voting rights—to find a suit for himself to appear in an informal interview with The Costly two days later. The rebellious middle-class representative’s opportunistic position is deepened against the crises of The Cheap when both try to draw the attention of the playwright: THE MIDDLING: At last, you are free. THE CHEAP: (Almost at the same time) Now you will hear me, Babu? THE MIDDLING: (Kindly) You sit down, brother. You need not say anything. THE CHEAP: What d’you say, Babu? I have been looking for him for so many days, to say a few words— THE MIDDLING: I know. I know everything that you want to say. I will speak on your behalf. You won’t manage to speak in order. THE CHEAP: How would you know my words? You don’t know me! THE MIDDLING: Who says I do not know you? You are the mass. THE CHEAP: No, Sir. My name is Mahadev Mandal. See? You don’t know me. … THE MIDDLING: Here comes his issue. Means—mass issue. THE CHEAP: As many times am I saying that my name is Mahadev Mandal—

THE MIDDLING: Look at him. Look at the tortured, exploited mass. What does he have? Only confinement, only shackles. In the name of independence he has only the right to starve, to die. He does not have food, clothing, shelter, education— THE CHEAP: (Standing up excitedly) Yes, Babu, right, don’t have anything— THE MIDDLING: Sit, sit, don’t get excited. I am saying everything. (The Cheap sits.) THE CHEAP: Say, Babu, say. We have nothing. THE MIDDLING: But there is one thing. THE CHEAP: What? THE MIDDLING: Power. Immense power. Power to turn the world topsy-turvy, by the explosion of a tremendous unrest. Power of a unified struggle. THE CHEAP: Can’t understand exactly, Babu, please speak in a simple way. THE MIDDLING: This is it! Did you see, playwright? This is the thing. He cannot understand. He is not aware of his infinite power. He has to be. … THE CHEAP: I heard you write plays. If you could write something about the poor like us— THE PLAYWRIGHT: What something? THE CHEAP: Suppose—the issue of water. THE PLAYWRIGHT: (Surprised) Water? THE CHEAP: Yes, water. Those Babus did not mention water? THE PLAYWRIGHT: Water? THE CHEAP: Why only water? Suppose, fertilizer. THE PLAYWRIGHT: Fertilizer? THE CHEAP: Fertilizer, pesticides— THE PLAYWRIGHT: Pesticides? THE CHEAP: Nothing is available, Babu. Available only in black market, but the price is so high that we cannot even touch them. The government doubled the price of fertilizer; urea is now Rs 5 per kg. On the other, nobody sells water at less than Rs 5 an hour. Some want 6. They say; what do I do? How can I sell for less than this price after buying diesel at Rs 6 per litre?80 THE PLAYWRIGHT: Wait, wait. I am getting confused. You are the mass? THE CHEAP: No, Babu, I am Mahadev Mandal. THE PLAYWRIGHT: Oh yes, all the same. I mean—the poor? THE CHEAP: … Just think, Babu, 15 kottah81 of land in all, and the house is on another 3 kottah. Last year I got 2 bigha82 in share.83 That too in the rains— THE PLAYWRIGHT: But unity? Class? Struggle? THE CHEAP: What? THE PLAYWRIGHT: Power? Unrest? Explosion? THE CHEAP: Cannot understand, Babu. THE PLAYWRIGHT: Did not understand? Water pesticides urea diesel—you understand these? THE CHEAP: How can we manage if we do not understand these? We till to eat—

THE PLAYWRIGHT: But I cannot understand those, brother! THE CHEAP: Have you never been to the villages? THE PLAYWRIGHT: No. Why should I? I live in a city, write plays. THE CHEAP: I am also saying that. Please come to the village for once. Write about the village in your plays. THE PLAYWRIGHT: There are many plays about the villages. THE CHEAP: Are there? What do they have, Babu? THE PLAYWRIGHT: They have—the tremendous amount of poverty of the farmers. Torture of the zamindars, jotdars, mahajans;84 seizure of land on account of unpaid rents and dues; setting their houses ablaze; abduction of their daughters and wives. Then the unified agitation, struggle of the farmers. Never did I see urea, diesel. Can there be a play with urea? … THE PLAYWRIGHT: IR8, quintal, BDO, diesel, Ratna, pump set, urea, shallow85—what do you think! Plays can be made of these! THE CHEAP: But, Babu, farming cannot be done without these! THE PLAYWRIGHT: Farming? What is the use of farming? What is the use of the story of farming in plays? Necessary is the ‘farmer’s story’, why farming? THE CHEAP: How can the story of the farmers be without farming, Babu?86

The necessity for such a long extract is to show the hypocrisy, ignorance, impudence, and pedantry of the middle-class intellectuals towards an illiterate lower-caste villager. The issue of the play can be collated with Gramsci’s Italy, though his experience of the rural intellectuals and their class distinctions do not match the Indian context even now. Nonetheless, his elaboration on urban intellectuals fits the character of The Middling perfectly: Intellectuals of the urban type have grown up along with industry and are linked to its fortunes. Their function can be compared to that of subaltern officers in the army. They have no autonomous initiative in elaborating plans for construction. Their job is to articulate the relationship between the entrepreneur and the instrumental mass and to carry out the immediate execution of the production plan decided by the industrial general staff, controlling the elementary stages of work. On the whole the average urban intellectuals are very standardised, while the top urban intellectuals are more and more identified with the industrial general staff itself.87

A serious play like Natyakarer Sandhane Tinti Charitra also concludes with the abrupt realization of the protagonist, and the message of the upcoming visit to the villages (to understand the rural problems) by the playwright, who had been opposing The Cheap vehemently till the

penultimate page. From the records we find that Sircar wrote two other plays in 1974: Bhanumatika Khel (The Game of Bhanumati) and Nidhiramer Rajya (The World of Nidhiram), both of which are not available in print. Bhoma appeared in 1975. Sircar has woven two realities together in this play: the urban story and the multiple nameless Bhomas’ pictures. The context of Bhoma is juxtaposed with the middle-class citizenry’s demand and aspirations for developmental measures amidst a cacophonous, unstable situation. When most Calcuttans were besotted with their own problems and engrossed in finding innumerable ways out, Bhoma had been begging for food. Who is this Bhoma? ‘Bhoma is a man. Bhoma does not destroy. Bhoma creates. We destroy Bhoma…. Bhoma is forest. Bhoma is cultivated land. Bhoma is village. Seventy-five percent of people in India live in the villages. Millions of Bhomas. We drink the blood of Bhomas to live in the cities.’88 In pain and hunger, he is united with Patrick Maguire of The Great Hunger by the Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh.89 Except that, all the Bhomas remain anonymous, ironically, because all of them (simply numbered as characters in the stage directions) share the same eponymous name. They have no individual identities for the privileged class. Without underestimating the legitimate urban problems, this much can be said: ‘If the Bhomas had rice, we would have nothing to eat. Bhoma’s red blood blooms into white jasmine on our rice plates. Every day, twice.’90 Elsewhere: ONE: You’ll borrow a hundred, and repay a hundred? TWO: That’s what it amounts to, my lord. ONE: That means you’ll become bankrupt, then? TWO: Bless me! It’s the country that will become bankrupt, why should I? My money is in a Swiss bank. ONE: Countrymen will call you a traitor? TWO: Who dares call me that? I am a patriot and I will remain so. ONE: How? TWO: Microphone. Newspapers, Radio. Television. Above everything else—the ‘I’ of man.91

Capitalism paralyses us, we do not find an answer; we do not try to find an answer. Change for the better actually seems to be a remote possibility. Nevertheless, one cannot overlook its unmissable similarities with Spartacus

in its final romantic message. Sukhapathya Bharater Itihas (A History of India for Pleasant Reading, 1976)92 is a dramatic rendition of the history of colonialism in India till her independence. In 1897, the editor of the Imperial Gazetteer of India had expressed his views on the revelation of the ‘truth’ of British rule in India in the following words: ‘A true history of the Indian people under British rule has still to be pieced together from the archives of a hundred distant record rooms, with a labour almost beyond the powers of any single man, and at an expense almost beyond the reach of any ordinary private fortune.’93 R. Palme Dutt thus suggested that only after Independence could a serious study of Indian history be undertaken ‘from a standpoint other than that of the conquerors’.94 But well before that, Dutt in his India To-day expressed his concern ‘to bring out some of the decisive forces of development which underlie the present situation and its problems’,95 which, in turn, inspired Sircar to write about the modus operandi of British exploitation.96 The repertoire of Marx’s contributions to the New York Daily Tribune on colonialism in India and the analyses of Irfan Habib and Prabhat Patnaik of the degree and nature of British exploitation in India have deepened our knowledge of the subject in recent years.97 There are other scholars, of course, who have contributed significantly in this area. Sircar did not have access to these resources; depending only on Dutt’s history, the plot of his play was laid out in an imaginary classroom where the audience plays the natural role of the students. The history narrated is now a known story of massive exploitation by the British colonizers. The interesting part of this play is its presentation; the way the facts and figures of colonial India are represented within the confines and restraints of a theatrical space is fascinating. The intelligent suggestion of the USA’s assumption now of the British role is compelling in the end. Thematically, Hattamalar Opare (1977)98 is close to Lakshmichharar Panchali. Modelled on Hattamalar Deshey—a novel by Premendra Mitra and Leela Majumdar, published in regular instalments in the children’s magazine Sandesh—in Hattamalar Opare, ‘the thieves are converted to the ethos of the other country.… In Majumdar’s Hattamalar Deshey, the thieves, reformed, come back to their own village Bhuintarasi (literally “panic in the soil”)’99 to realize eventually that though the place did not exist in reality, it must be deep-seated in their hearts.100 The play, a ‘genuine pride’ of Sircar, upholds

the proposition of Prastab101 that money is an indecent symbol, and ends with a chorus song, which emphasizes the need to exercise collective effort in order to abolish the existence of money. Sircar thought that the ‘children should become aware of these’, too.102 When I asked him whether the concept of communism in Hattamalar Opare is a feasible idea in a world where there is a multiplicity of voices, undeterred Sircar replied: Well, impossible, that is manifest. But we should try to make it possible. A dream should be created in at least one play to show where I want to reach. ‘From everybody according to his ability, to everybody according to his need’: this is the Marxist idea that I have been following. Members of the CPI(M) commented that Hattamala was utopian. Why? Because they do not want to go there (laughter). I remember one line of a song from a very old musical comedy, which had a great influence on me: ‘You have to have a dream for the dream to come true.’ This dream is getting lost. Where do we want to go? Everybody knows that communism is not possible in this world. But it should be tried out, at the least. The problem now is that, on the one hand, the industrialists have to be wooed, on the other, verbal allegiance to the movement has to be maintained. For all these reasons, I wrote that play, one of my most favourite plays. With simple language and elements of laughter, this play is to the liking of all, the young and the aged alike.103

Sircar’s convincing tone might assure us intangibly and elusively for the time being, but his ‘dream’ and wishful thinking fail to give us any concrete message of equality. The American director Judith Malina, who inspired Sircar in the formation of the Third Theatre, said the following in a different context in more realistic terms: ‘As to the play, I am uncomfortable in utopias. From St. Augustine to Thomas More, from Huxley to Shaw, the utopias are ugly because they are not human and our only criterion for beauty is a human one’.104 Depending on the workshop experiences of Hattamalar Opare, human bodies were employed in making the set elements of Gandi (The Boundary, 1977),105 adapted from Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Sircar decided to ‘transform’106 the classic because of its ‘Indianness’ and contemporariness, and chop off the Prologue considering it ‘irrelevant’.107 I did not produce Caucasian Chalk Circle to explore the Brechtian mode. My intention was not to introduce Brecht to the Indian audience. I thought this play to be absolutely Indian, very contemporary, perhaps more relevant than to Brecht’s Germany. The land belongs to the farmers: what does a German farmer make of this idea? Our agricultural workers understand this issue. That was why when our group produced plays in Sundarban, to the

audience, neither Brecht, nor Badal Sircar was important. For them a small piece of land was very important. For that purpose, I edited Brecht’s text.108

Actually, Sircar made this statement while justifying his ‘copying’ and ‘stealing’ practices from other sources, but quite unfortunately, in the flow of unrestricted emotion, he forgot the tragic history of ‘Brecht’s Germany’.109 However, the play was intended for the arena or open-air performances. The role of the Sutradhar or stage manager should be played alternately by the actors performing different characters because Sircar thought that the Sutradhar was an integral part of the play, not just an isolated character. No decorative measures or costumes, except for the sentry cap, black coat-type jacket, scarf, towel, and bedspread, were put to use.110 As the set elements were prepared by the actors, some of them had to enact several roles.111 Despite Sircar’s ideological stand on the adaptation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Gandi did not go well with some critics. They lashed out at the adaptation for the ‘outright simplification’,112 and ‘subtle dialectics and interplay of contradictions’ missing in Gandi.113 Bhanga Manush (Fractured Man, 1977) was conceived and produced collectively by Satabdi. Human relationship and its crises were portrayed in this script-less play, which came out of the workshops—Satabdi was engaged in—on themes such as starvation, monstrosity of money, horror of imprisonment, pain of torture, etc.,114 Sircar said: In terms of personal experiences of the participants, it can even be called the greatest of our voyages; but on the other hand we were so vulnerable in the performances that even one cynic smile could hurt us terribly, and we were unable to continue with it after nine performances. I am incapable of describing it in writing, and so I have to pass over it with this bare mention of it.115

Apparently, Mani-Kanchan (1977), a short play about a magician couple named Mani and Kanchan, would seem inconsequential amidst the halo of its predecessors and successors, but how their game of thought-projection— borrowed from an English comedy and ‘rounded off with an original ending’116—is linked with the matter of state security leading to their eventual incarceration for violating MISA,117 would remind us unmistakably of his great plays of this period where resentment continued to spiral. Its performance was ‘fun’ and a delightful minute journey to Sircar.118 Reading through the first few pages of Basi Khabar (Stale News,

1978),119 we get a feeling that Sircar wishes to juxtapose the history of the Santhal movement of 1855–6 and the repressive measures adopted against it with the forgetful, self-centred urban 1970s. But as we progress, it becomes more clear that the play does not only sprout from that restless, yet selfabsorbed decade, but also churns out a comparative contemporary picture of violence against the subalterns with the help of statistical data. The violence against the Santhal movement and the eventual death of several hundred rebels took place in 1856: ‘[M]any days ago.… Now it is the twentieth century. Decade of 1970.’120 The killing of the Santhals, the Harijans, and the workers, continued in different parts of the country. ONE GROUP OF CHORUS: Nineteenth century— ANOTHER GROUP OF CHORUS: Twentieth century. ONE GROUP OF CHORUS: Decade of [18]50. ANOTHER GROUP OF CHORUS: Decade of [19]70. ONE GROUP OF CHORUS: British India— ANOTHER GROUP OF CHORUS: Independent India.121

When we hear the Chorus exchange what has been quoted above (the Chorus being divided into two groups), we feel that all our advancements are futile, nothing but a demonstration of false history; our progression is actually retrogressive, our heads hang in shame. The young man in the play instigates us to protest, revolt against the visible and invisible brutality of man. In K. Venkata Reddy’s comparative analysis of the young man and Indrajit, the former is an inverted image of the latter: ‘In Evam Indrajit, a rebel becomes a Nirmal, a compromising, inert citizen.… Indrajit becomes Nirmal, much to the chagrin and disappointment of the writer. But, in Stale News it is the other way round. The young man, who wanted to lead a normal, routine life, becomes a rebel and revolts against the capitalist society.’122 His feelings overpower him to shake off the inertia and sentimentality that Indrajit, his predecessor, had. We remember the last words of Ebong Indrajit, where the ‘journey’ took precedence over the aspiration for a ‘destination’. On arrival at Basi Khabar, we realize that Indrajit’s journey did not stop. It is not him; now his successor is undergoing the same turmoil, yet agitating within, inciting us to rise to the challenge, provoking at the same time to question ourselves: are we any different from the British colonizers? Are we any less brutal? Otherwise, ‘why are we not shouting out?’123 Because, to quote from Bhoma,

FIRST: Blood? SECOND: Fish blood. THIRD: Human blood. ALL: C-o-l-d. C-o-l-d. C-o-l-d.124

As ‘Death, blood, and terror are ruling over this land’,125 human hands are dyed red with blood. Though Sircar claimed to have contributed to the making of the play just as ‘any other member’, and evaluated his contribution as of an ‘editor’,126 in Chapter Seven we would explore the trajectory of author(s) and authority in plays like Bhoma, Basi Khabar, etc., created collectively by Satabdi. Padmanadir Majhi (The Boatman of the River Padma), a classic Bengali novel by Manik Bandyopadhyay, was adapted in 1978, but no printed script is available. In Voyages in the Theatre, Sircar said that he had attempted to write the play twice, but it was only completed in 1990 on the third attempt and was produced successfully.127 Memorandum was written in 1979, also lost in oblivion without leaving any trace in print. The same year, the translation of Peter Weiss’s The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade or Marat/Sade, as it is popularly known in short, appeared as Ekti Hatyar Natyakatha (The Dramatic Account of a Murder). The investigation of revolution as well as (in)sanity must have attracted Sircar, but the first-ever joint production with other groups128 refrained from the usual approach to portraying madness. According to Sircar, they saw the play from the perspective of Sade and other inmates of the lunatic asylum.129 We Come to the River by the Marxist British dramatist Edward Bond was adapted as Nadite Dubiye Dao (Drown in the River) in 1980. I did not find any printed text of this play, though I have a copy of the handwritten script by Sircar. The joint production of Satabdi that I saw at Loreto Day School, Sealdaha, was named Nadite. The anti-war theme and the brutality of warfare reappear in this adaptation, which ends with a united song conveying the fanciful message of powerlessness of the state and its repressive machineries against the vigour and strength of a small baby, who is a representative of the common man. Overabundance of songs in this play seems to have compensated for the inexpressibility of the dramatist. Naginikanya (The Serpent-girl), not available in print either, and Manushey Manushey (Amongst Human Beings), a script-less production,

were conceived in 1981. Padmanadir Majhi and Naginikanya both are in line with most of Sircar’s other adaptations, as he would argue. While the masterly ‘subtle’ and ‘artistic’ analysis of village life in Padmanadir Majhi prompted Sircar to re-present the novel theatrically, Naginikanya, dramatized from Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay’s minor novel Naginikanyar Kahini (The Tale of the Serpent-girl), is concerned with tribal superstitions, rituals, emotions, and the decadence of the native group after facing challenges from modern structured systems.130 The production of Naginikanya remained limited to anganmancha, ironically returning to and emphasizing the ‘zonal effects in the lighting, using the available lighting facilities’,131 but Padmanadir Majhi was performed both indoor and outdoor. Both the scripts were written ‘using the speeches of the characters as well as the descriptive lines and the authorial comments’,132 and both performances were stopped after a few productions for some reasons not disclosed by Sircar.133 For the absence of scripts in print, I would refrain from analysing his treatment of the tribal and rural life in Bengal. In the performance of Manushey Manushey, Satabdi depicted, collectively, human existence in relation to power mechanisms. The play, which starts on a negative note of the disintegration of the Chorus, ends in the following: ‘Manushey Manushey bhalobasa (love among human beings) is formed with emphatic “yes”. Chorus goes into a frenzy of liberation and demolish [sic] the throne, throwing off the shoes, plate, cloth, box and table. Master flees, Chorus breaks into a wordless song of liberation, dance together holding hands….’134 I would refrain from analysing the text further, as it is not available in print. Naginikanya was followed by Androcles o Singha in 1982, adapted from Androcles and the Lion by another pioneering socialist playwright, George Bernard Shaw. Sircar did not deviate much from the original in this adaptation, which uses the idea of compassion in Christianity to counteract the brutality of the Roman empire. The final message of the play is that though Androcles is freed from slavery, and the Lion is not captured either, the cage remains, slavery remains. ‘A few Christians are saved, the Roman captain is in love, yet others are dying; warfare continues.’135 As long as murder, slavery, war, terror, hatred, division, envy, and greed exist, the protest would continue.136 Udyogparva (1982) is a wonderful satire of the Mahabharata. In the fifth

book of the epic, the Udyogaparva (Preparatory Period), both the armies prepare for the ensuing battle. In addition to sending emissaries and exchanging diplomatic dialogues, the recruitment of warriors continues. In Sircar’s play, a group of theatre students enacts it not as a sacred text, but as an episode of violence. To them, the Mahabharata is a text of violence and a series of episodes of infidelity.137 Being dissuaded by their teacher from projecting these aspects of a sacred text, the students decide to keep the focus on the common people and their existential crises: the futility of life (especially of the infantry),138 termination of a Brahmin priest from the job of performing religious rites and his wife’s anxiety for the means of subsistence,139 proliferation of liquor dens, profiteering of an intermediary class dealing in horses and elephants for the war.140 Udyogparva is a brilliant political satire, especially in the context of Sircar’s anti-war themes and religious fundamentalism in the subcontinent. Dwairath (Combat between Two Charioteers, 1982), influenced by an unnamed foreign play, possibly Tango Palace by Cuban-American dramatist María Irene Fornés, is about the human struggle within and the complex question of placing the self or knowledge first. This play questions the notion, which preaches that the constitution of an individual is the assimilation of both because one tries to win over the other. In a constant combat between wish and wisdom, ‘knowledge’ presides powerfully in a ‘logical’ society, even in the next world. [W]e should add that the exercise of power creates and causes to emerge new objects of knowledge and accumulates new bodies of information.… The exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power….141 [I]n knowledge there is not a congruence with the object, a relation of assimilation, but, rather, a relation of distance and domination; there is not something like happiness and love but hatred and hostility; there is not a unification but a precarious system of power….142 [B]ehind all knowledge [savoir], behind all attainment of knowledge [connaissance], what is involved is a struggle for power.143

Foucault’s concepts of ‘pastoral power’ with regard to Christianity can be adjusted to the idea of next world in Hinduism, after some concessions: the final objective of ‘pastoral power’ is to guarantee redemption to individual in the next world, protect that individual in the present life as well. It is a form of power that directs, instructs, and also assumes the self-sacrificial role for the sake of the community.144

The agony of Bhoma reappeared directly, after nearly eight years, in Khat Mat Kring (1983), though of course the anguish is loosely visible in plays written in between. Chaplin’s stroke of genius in presenting ‘serious ideas through hilarious situations’ and the almost similar style and statement of Littlewood’s Oh, What a Lovely War! inspired this play.145 Bhoma concluded with the message of a possible change in approach—from inertia to action; from agreement to objection and hint at reconstruction—though it seemed a distant hope as long as there was obliteration, annihilation, destruction, killing, wiping out, and mopping up in different ways: Cockroach! There is no end. The more I kill, the more the bastards return.146 Angry Rama beheaded the mediator with bow.…147 Time? What time? There is no time. Time is stopped. Time is dead.148 *** OLD MAN: Final solution. Finish and get rid of them. CHORUS: Dachau. OLD MAN: Human killing factory. CHORUS: Buchenwald! OLD MAN: Factory! CHORUS: Treblinka? OLD MAN: Factory! CHORUS: Auschwitz! OLD MAN: The biggest factory! CHORUS: Shhhhhh—149 *** FIRST: What is this? SECOND: A girl. And a woman. Were. FIRST: What happened to her? SECOND: Burnt to death? FIRST: Accident or suicide? SECOND: None of them? FIRST: Then? SECOND: Burnt to death. FIRST: Who? SECOND: No. 1—mother-in-law, no. 2—sister-in-law, no. 3—husband. FIRST: Why? SECOND: Her father did not pay the amount of dowry as per the contract. FIRST: Then murder case?

SECOND: No. Suicide. FIRST: How come? SECOND: Lots of money in her father-in-law’s pockets and three VIPs.150 *** VIJAY: You are sacked. PRAHLAD: I will die, sir. … VIJAY: (To the audience) The death of Prahlad is symbolic, so is his life. Actually, he neither dies, nor lives; dead although living, or alive although dying—all the same. There are many Prahlads.151 *** PRAHLAD: Hope you understood the matter? Naru, the agent of Lettilal, drops bombs into party meetings and leaves the flags of other parties there. So, both parties try to get arms and bombs. And Lettilal becomes richer by selling petos.152 *** PRAHLAD: But, sir, on the land of the Adivasis— VIJAY: Whose land? The land belongs to the government; they have been allowed to live on it out of benevolence. The problem of aborigines was resolved in Latin America by dropping bombs, firing machine guns, distributing blankets with germs of cholera and smallpox. India is, at least, a state with tolerance, forbearance; that is why they are still alive.153 *** VIKTOR: Fool! If ‘take life’ for the country is said, does it sound good? So, ‘give life’ should be said.154 *** CHORUS: Atom! (Siren) Hydrogen! (Siren) Cobalt! (Siren) Neutron! (Siren)…. VIKTOR: Survival of the Fittest! PRAHLAD: (Rising up) That means—the one who has power survives. VIJAY: There has been no change in the living beings since the prehistoric age—155

In Bhoma, Basi Khabar, and other previous plays, too, death returns again and again in different contexts and situations. The anxiety and agony about the history of nuclear attacks and a possible one in the future156 are also recurring themes. Sinri (Ladder, 1984), likewise, does not let us forget the catastrophes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of warfare in general, the colossal amount of money spent on it in the name of national defence, instead of alleviating starvation, unemployment, and human lives.157 ‘Still we are alive. We live. This is our life—head-low, eyes-low, anger-low life.’158 We

get caught up in the rat race only to move up the ladder of success and dust our feet off on the face of the people who are beneath.159 Like Krishna of the Bhagavadgita, the Father appears to show us the beauty of battle: ‘Picture, son, there is picture (there is picture). Look (look)! There—white snow (snow), white sheet of snow on the green mountain (sheet)! How beautiful!’160 Nothing other than the universe exists—‘What is the use of understanding them (what is the use) [uneven distribution of money, problems of cultivation, starvation, and so forth]? Those are trivial matters (trivial). Knowledge is profound (profound). Human life is short (short). So, the collection of knowledge should be selective (selective). Greater, larger knowledge should be selected instead of trifles.’161 These statements remind us of the sermons of the Gita where Krishna justifies war by saying that the mere mortal body is nothing;, only the ageless, undying, imperishable soul is important. So, killing is not actually an act of homicide; it is, ironically, a process of liberating the immortal soul from the confines of the perishable body. Therefore, the Sinri says that the Father (figure) does not die. ‘It has to be killed’;162 the one who kills also becomes the Father.163 Thus, the ladder is renewed one rung after the other, generation after generation. The play reminds us of Dwairath and Foucault’s observations about the relationship between knowledge and power. The poetic montage Janmabhumi Aj (Native Land, Today), not available in print, was directed in 1986 by Sircar. The collection of poems, written by Birendra Chattopadhyay, Manibhushan Bhattacharya, and Sircar, expressed deep concern for the destitute, their starvation, and anger at the persons involved in causing such a terrible situation. Though the montage was produced on the basis of workshop process, the rules of workshops did not seem to be always important. Parallel to workshops, they concentrated on speech-act, which claimed to have conveyed the message effectively.164 The South African play Woza Albert! by Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema, and Barney Simon was translated as Sada Kalo (White and Black, 1986), and jointly produced in 1987 by Satabdi, Pathasena, and Arena Theatre Group, obviously stressing the subject of racism. Apartheid in South Africa could have been translated for caste-ridden Indian society, but particular Biblical references in the original play got in the way of an acceptable rendering.165 Churna Prithibi (Crushed Earth, 1987) does not have any printed version, to the best of my knowledge. The play is an assemblage of the scenes, passages,

and lines from Sircar’s previous plays put together intact. Though Sircar did not want its production, the play was produced jointly.166 Inspired by a Pandavani performance from Chhattisgarh, Sircar wrote the solo piece Bhul Rasta (Wrong Route, 1988). It is the story of a prince who sets out, through a dangerous route, in search of ambuphal, a special type of fruit, to treat his mother’s loss of appetite. Eventually, he loses track in the dark and starts wandering about in the woods. The next seven days and nights he is forced to spend almost without any food, to wake up one fine morning to find a young man standing in front of him. The prince stays with him and his mother because he still cannot find his way. The man and his mother are unaware of ‘civilized’ manners or of who the prince is, nor do they have any idea of the kingdom outside their territory or of the monarchy and its hierarchical structure. In the end, the narrator suggests that the prince would probably have gone back to his luxurious lifestyle had he found his way out, but as he remembers nothing, he cannot even search the right path. The narrator asks his audience: ‘Sir and Ma’am, please think—was that path, the way to the jungle, to the woodcutter’s hut, a right or a wrong one? Is the way of calling [someone] brother, mother, or friend right, or kicking [someone] right?—Please think, Sir.’167 Through an imaginary world Sircar tries to create an atmosphere of equality, a little like Hattamalar Opare. Till the last few pages, it is not clear where the conversations between a maternal uncle and his nephew to make a film in Bioscope (1988) would lead us to. Apparently, their dialogues are full of frivolity, indicative of social incongruity. Suddenly, without any prior warning, the uncle starts shouting at his nephew in a fit of rage; thenceforth, the direction of the play changes completely. We understand that the heat was increasing in the facetious remarks, or as the uncle would say, ‘I tried painfully to fend the mind off— hide—blood.…’168 The motif of death, extinction, and eradication, as we have noticed in Bhoma and Basi Khabar, recurs only to show a grim chance of survival and the cyclic order of termination of life and revival. Ka Cha Ta Ta Pa (AEIOU, 1993)169 deals with several issues in a dream sequence: the emotional mistreatment of children, displacement of poor inhabitants living on the banks of a river on account of building a dam, religious fundamentalism in the name of Lord Rama, inception of liberal economy in India, establishment of nuclear power plants against the backdrop of the Chernobyl disaster, and so on. The year of composition is critical. The

economic liberalization of 1991, initiated by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh in response to a balance-ofpayments crisis, did away with the ‘Licence Raj’ and ended many public monopolies, allowing approval for foreign direct investment in many sectors. Although India has emerged as one of the fastest growing economies in the world since the 1990s, it is a bitter fact that the majority of the population does not have the means to earn a minimum daily wage. If the Forbes list of Indian millionaires/billionaires is compared side by side the reports of the National Crime Records Bureau and the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, the unfortunate picture of uneven transformation of the Indian society cannot escape one’s notice: the 2015 report by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations also emphasizes this point and says that India is home to the highest number of hungry people in the world, at 194 million, surpassing China.170 Over the years, thousands of farmers are dying/committing suicide,171 millions of people in the unorganized sector are fighting for their lives,172 and a handful of industrialists are amassing more and more fortune.173 To protect the rights of the people on the banks of the Narmada river and in and around the Sardar Sarovar Dam, the Narmada Bachao Andolan was started in the 1980s. While the government claimed that by the help of 30 proposed dams across the Narmada, the Sardar Sarovar Dam being the largest, more than 1.8 million hectares could have been irrigated and drinking water could be provided to Kutch and Saurashtra in Gujarat, opponents alleged that those claims were an exaggerated projection of the reality. They protested that the proposed dams, especially the Sardar Sarovar, would displace several hundred thousand people and affect many more.174 After a prolonged legal, political, and social battle, on 8 May 2006, the Supreme Court of India declared in its verdict that the court was ‘not inclined to restrain the continuing work of raising the height of the dam’.175 Incidentally, Manmohan Singh was the prime minister of India when this verdict came out, and Narendra Modi (Bharatiya Janata Party) was the chief minister of Gujarat, Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Bharatiya Janata Party) was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, and in Maharashtra, their counterpart belonged to the INC. Although Ka Cha Ta Ta Pa does not mention the Narmada movement directly, from its timing and the old couple’s statements in the play, we can draw our conclusions. The Babri Masjid controversy in 1991

also became such a stigma on the image of India that no analysis would be sufficient to measure the loss and destruction incurred to the socio-politicospiritual mind of India. After the great colonial ‘awakening’,176 once again the religious fundamentalist groups were driving India to the path of saffronization, where only the rule of Rama would prevail and Rahim would have to accommodate. Alongside, Sircar’s anxiety about nuclear destruction has also recurred in this play, with a slight change in reference; instead of bombs, here, he voices concern over reactors. In place of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl becomes the monstrous sign of human callousness and destruction. In 1994, there came Charuibhati (Picnic), after Fernando Arrabal’s Picnic on the Battlefield, a beautifully absurdist one-act play that no doubt appealed to Sircar for its style, but more so on account of its anti-war theme, one of his recurrent concerns. As in his original works, Sircar had a principle behind translating and adapting works, which he revealed in an interview with me. In reply to a question about foreign influences on his plays, Sircar said: Certainly, there are many such instances. If my philosophy is to write plays on sociopolitical conditions, use theatre to publicize those conditions, aspire towards social change, I will copy then, steal from every source I come by. I have no compunction in that, because the real purpose is not that…. Whether I have written it or not is not that important. People now consider me a dramatist, but basically I am not a dramatist, not a writer. I am a theatre-worker, a theatre-man. That was why those plays had to be written. The main job has been to work in theatre. So, I borrowed and adapted whenever necessary.… [E]ither through adaptations or by writing original plays, I tried to present [a particular type of] content to people.177

Ore Bihanga (O Bird, 1994) attempts to show a way of emancipation to the toiling class through their participation in theatre activities. Rajlakshmi, who works as a domestic help, has been brought to the house of Pagaldada by her neighbour Mokshada, another domestic help, to act in theatre. From Mokshada’s description of Pagaldada as an atheist theatre person, Sircar’s image becomes prominent. He is old, believes in a theatre practice, which is similar to the Third Theatre, and also wants to work with people from the lower strata of society: the rickshaw-puller, mechanic, bidi-worker, domestic help. Initially, Rajlakshmi is afraid of being rejected by Pagaldada for her incompetence; her fear intensifies by witnessing the performance of Mokshada, who has been performing for quite some time. But by Pagaldada’s

candid behaviour, Rajlakshmi overcomes her fear and starts performing with them. The short play ends with a poem of pursuing one’s dreams: from constriction to emancipation, from the limits of idea to the flight of thought. Other than unbridled emotion, the play does not concern itself with any logicality, let alone practicality. The absence of reality and a search for one’s identity through unreality and fairytale-like situations bring Ka Cha Ta Ta Pa close to Bagalacharitmanas (The Hagiography of Bagala, 1997), inspired by the American television series I Dream of Jeannie.178 Like Appi or Aparna of Ka Cha Ta Ta Pa, Bagalacharan Batabyal is a victim of emotional (and thus physical) maltreatment. As Aparna has to travel to the dreamland, Bhajagantadham, to realize that man is a dangerous element,179 and eventually learn to stand up to fighting and destruction, Bagalacharan also has to come face to face with an old man and a supernatural woman like the genie of Aladdin’s lamp, Nila, to understand his own ability, to feel the significance of his very existence. The title of the play was modelled on Tulsidas’s classic on the life of Rama, Ramcharitmanas,180 humorously showing the plights faced by his ordinary protagonist. This was the last play that Sircar composed, at least no other printed material written after Bagalacharitmanas is available. While Sircar’s proscenium phase was divorced from the Indian social reality to a great extent, the Third Theatre stage is connected with contemporary problems only tangentially. Among 34 plays181 that have been discussed in this chapter, only nine—Sagina Mahato, Michhil, Natyakarer Sandhane Tinti Charitra, Bhoma, Basi Khabar, Khat Mat Kring, Janmabhumi Aj, Bioscope, and Ka Cha Ta Ta Pa—touch upon contemporary Indian political situation superficially; some of them merely allude to the social uncertainty as a passing reference/comment. The rest of them are concerned largely—either theoretically or allegorically/philosophically—with the human plight, repressive measures by the state, disuniting character of money, terror of warfare, and unity of human beings in the face of overwhelming odds, though these concerns are also visible in the first category of plays—tending towards passive depiction/criticisms of society through the individual, who did not die after Ebong Indrajit. Now Indrajit, transformed into Sagina Mahato, Spartacus (though Sircar emphasized on the feature of group of slaves),

Khoka, Old Man, Bhoma, The Cheap, Androcles, Aparna (Appi), Bagalacharan Batabyal, talks various languages from different perspectives: apparently, as a representative of the mass. Only in very few plays, is Indrajit absent. Interestingly, after starting his theatre career with Solution X in 1956, it took Sircar almost 18 years to write and produce a play (Michhil, 1974) on contemporary Indian situation concerning apparently with the predicament of the common people. If we consider Sesh Nei (1970) and Sagina Mahato (1970), which are primarily restricted to critiquing the communist movement in India, the gap is a staggering 14 years. The affliction of Bhoma (1975) reflects in Khat Mat Kring after eight years in 1983. Fifteen plays created in between—eight of them are adaptations—are loosely connected with contemporary social problems. We are surprised to note such prolonged periods of ‘inaction’/‘inertia’ from such a committed and active Marxist dramatist with a ‘missionary’ zeal for ‘social change’.182 Among the adapted plays in the Third Theatre period, at least 10 were adapted from foreign texts, while 6 were inspired by Indian sources. I do not take Bhanumatika Khel, Nidhiramer Rajya, and Memorandum into consideration, as their sources are unknown. Six of the adapted plays are situated in fairytale-like situations. In view of these facts, one might ask whether Indian social and political condition was so unproductive to inspire a creative thinker. Let us see the reasons for adapting some of the plays: 1. Ekti Hatyar Natyakatha: ‘I made it because I liked the play…. Marat/Sade, when I made the adaptation, I liked it very much so I did it for my sake.’183 2. Mani-Kanchan: ‘Later in search of new plays for the new theatre, it was rounded off with an original ending to make a short play.… That was fun. It was fun for the audience too….’184 3. Suitcase: ‘Had seen one English film—Yellow Rolls Royce [sic].… Thought of writing three similar plays on suitcase…. Only one was written.’185 4. Naginikanya: ‘The atmosphere came out better by having some zonal effects in the lighting, using the available lighting facilities.’186 5. Padmanadir Majhi: ‘I wanted to find a way of presenting the novel theatrically, using the speeches of the characters as well as the descriptive

lines and authorial comments in the novel.’187 While in the first three instances, according to Sircar, there was no concrete social cause, ironically, in Naginikanya, he came back to make use of the lighting system, one of the paraphernalia of the conventional proscenium theatre. The reason for using ‘authorial comments’ in the adaption of Padmanadir Majhi can be best analysed in Barthes’s words: ‘We want to write something, and at the same time we write (intransitively). In short, our age produces a bastard type: the author-writer. His function is inevitably paradoxical: he provokes and exorcises at the same time.’188 With regard to adaptations, his stance was even bolder at this stage. He would not have ‘any compunction’ to ‘copy … steal from every source’ despite claiming, ‘We realised most of all that the success of the Third Theatre depends basically on an honest approach. Fakery for the sake of impressing the audience has no place in this theatre; nor is it required. For it does not have to depend on the box office.’189 He justifies ‘embezzlement’ by dazzling the reader/audience with word jugglery. Here are some examples: ‘my philosophy is … social change’; ‘no compunction’; ‘Whether I have written it or not is not that important’; ‘I am a theatre-worker, a theatre-man’; ‘The main job has been to work in theatre’; ‘I borrowed and adapted whenever necessary’; ‘I thought this play to be absolutely Indian’; ‘what does a German farmer make of this idea?’ Interestingly, plays like Sagina Mahato do not mention any political party in the text, which makes the criticism extremely insubstantial. Bharucha touched upon the issue, but concluded thus: ‘[T]he individual caught in the network of politics who concerns Sircar.’190 A little later we would see that Sircar was only concerned when his voice was ‘caught in the network of politics’. Without taking a definite position, in other plays as well, I think he deviated from his commitment to ‘a social change’ through ‘an honest approach’. The political obscurity in the plays is intensified by the extremely fluid linguistic manoeuvre. With this are blended multiple voices; diverse and numerous issues fleeting and evaporating before the reader/audience can get a feel of it. Here, I would like to remind the reader of Sumanta Banerjee’s statement quoted in the Introduction. However, the combined result of all these is converted into a fast, rhythmic, non-concrete expressions, which set down impalpably the discrimination between the voice of the destitute and

that of the opportunist class. In a state of flux and mixture, everybody, every statement, seems to be a fleeting character and a skein of flimsy confabulation. In a homogenous projection, the impact of every statement seems to carry the same impact, where the individual’s voice is lost and the collective voice is cacophonous (only significant to pseudo-social norms), without any character, possibly signifying the contemporary social condition. Simultaneously, another dominant voice (the voice/s of Indrajit/s) runs through, subjugating the ‘other’ (individual and collective, together) voices to repetitive utterances of its own deprivation, thereby ignoring to identify or recognize the class struggle and class antagonism latent in the ‘other’ voices: the constant tension between the exploiter and the exploited. In Michhil, which does not want to recognize the democratic social movements, and lost faith in similar processions, Khoka says: ‘Stop this! Stop this bluff! These are not actual matters. (To the audience) why are you putting up with all these? Can’t you understand—these are hoax? Cheating? Confusing tactics? I am murdered, being murdered everyday, will be murdered everyday—this is the actual matter.’191 By commenting all, Khoka also nullifies the very existence of the hawkers,192 and the (female) beggar appeared before. In fact, when the beggar implores for a piece of stale roti, Khoka breaks into the situation and orders: ‘Silence! Silence Silence Silence-ce-ce!’193 It is unequivocally conveyed that Khoka’s search is more important even if it requires to dispense with the beggar’s appeal for food. Khoka tries to silence everybody, even the toiling class. Both his statements suddenly remind us of an incident on 8 March 1949, when Sircar’s communist leader said, ‘Our … last target would be the workers’,194 after which the baffled Sircar left that party meeting and started losing interest in party politics. Twenty-five years later, that party leader is reincarnated in Khoka. Khoka speaks his words, the words of exclusion: the words of silencing the ‘other’ voices. After the first three pages, Bhoma is juxtaposed in the following manner: ONE: Bhoma means jungle. Bhoma means cultivation. Bhoma means village. TWO: And city. [A tune (tune-1).] ONE: At the taxi window a garland of Arabian jasmine-ne-ne— OTHERS: Arabian jasmine Arabian jasmine Arabian jasmine— ONE: Then, a beggar mother with a child in her lap. OTHERS: Beggar mother Beggar mother Beggar mother—195

Though Bhoma means both village and city, his city counterparts, hawkers (selling garlands) and beggars, are introduced curtly almost in the same breath. After this trivial and futile introduction, their mention recurs for the last time, a little before the conclusion: THREE: Bhoma’s mother, Bhoma’s wife, Bhoma’s sister, Bhoma’s daughter— FOUR: Clean utensils at Babu’s home SIX: Conceive Babu’s son—196

On the contrary, Sircar takes us through the meandering maze of multiple issues running through pages, of course Bhoma’s agony recurring as central issue, but his city counterparts are lost amidst multiple, disjointed voices. Their forlorn topic gasps in the river of words, losing their class character and class struggle, whereas the opportunist bhadralok middle-class discourses occupy a considerable space. Tragically, the problem of the struggling middle class is even limited to a stream of thought: SECOND: I am a stenographer in Samson and Blackbird Company my salary is four hundred fifty-five rupees take-home pay minus provident fund is four hundred twenty-eight rupees forty paisa. I have a wife two sons one daughter mother two brothers one younger sister after qualifying the BSc next brother is jobless for one and a half year gives two private coaching earns one hundred ten rupees youngest brother will take part-one exam sister is in tenth standard wife passed school final exam cooks mother cooks elder son is in class four —

Then, THREE: (Shouting) Shut up!197

The voice of the struggling middle class is also silenced here. The statement of ‘Second’ is repeated a few times followed by his ‘opportunist’ characterization: SECOND: I’ll educate my son in an English-medium school! Then IIT. Indian Institute of Technology—Kharagpur! … THREE: Yes yes teach teach. SECOND: Educate him by selling up utensils. THREE: Yes yes sell up utensils. FOUR: To educate him, your country will also sell up utensils. FIVE: Thousands of utensils would be sold to bring up your son.

SIX: After that, your son would leave in pride for America.198

Here, I think, readers would remember the history of Sircar’s own academic and later occupational pursuit abroad. They may also remember that initially he wanted to roam around Europe, as discussed in Chapter Two. It cannot be forgotten either that he went to the USSR, Poland, and Czechoslovakia on a two-month government cultural-exchange programme tour in 1969; his trip to the USA in 1972 was partially funded by Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, as discussed in Chapter Four—all public money. Yet in Bhoma, ‘Second’ is accused of opportunism. Even if we ignore the contradictions between his own practice and suggestions to the readers/audience for ‘social change’ with ‘an honest approach’, it would not be viable to hold the struggling middle-class character ‘responsible’ here for allegedly selling his soul to the devil. On the other hand, this kind of depiction does not take the middle-class stratification into account: upper middle class, middle middle class, and lower middle class—each of which has different complex characteristics and class identities. As a result, a sharp polarization creeps into the textuality (in other similar plays of this period as well): a singular voice and multiple voices. While the first is textually and ideologically dominant, the latter is significant vis-à-vis contemporary social and political situation. Similarly, in the process of making the play, the playwright wants to enlighten the audience/readers with his (newly) acquired knowledge/realization presuming them to be ignorant and insensitive and impose those ideas on the spectators/readers considering his own concepts/understandings inviolable and hallowed. Right in the beginning of Bhoma, we see: ONE: I have known. Didn’t know earlier. THREE: What didn’t you know? ONE: Many days spent without knowing. Now I know. FOUR: What did you know? ONE: Many things. Many many things. FIVE: What things? ONE: Those things which are not known to many. As I didn’t know earlier. TWO: What did you not know? ONE: I want to say. Want to say to those who don’t know. THREE: What do you want to say? ONE: Many stories. Bhoma’s story.199

Earlier, we have seen Sircar’s own confession of not knowing the class of Bhoma.200 When he came to know of Bhomas, the concentration lay there juxtaposing with the opportunist cacophony, which were known to him. But the marginalized characters of the city, even after being equated with the Bhomas, fail to find a space not only in this play, but in other plays as well. When the opportune moment came in Ore Bihanga, Sircar failed miserably. His lack of knowledge/perception of their spoken language, behaviour, dream, and despair is starkly etched in this attempt, which ends in a poor display of poetry writing. We do not know whether it was largely due to his ignorance of the class, but his dreadful terseness (verging on silence) is agonizing. The utilitarian value of the plays is elevated to the level of authoritative universality, the seed of which was sown in Ebong Indrajit. Sircar wants his readers/spectators to sway to his pain, pathos, pleasure, and quest, as he had experienced in his personal life, often disregarding the logicality/demand of the text: WRITER: What would I write? Who would I write about? How many people do I know? How many are familiar? … I’ve written plays. Many plays. I want to write plays. More plays. I do not know about the exploited common people. Don’t know the slave in the coal mine. Don’t know the farmer of the paddy field. Snake charmer gypsies, Santhal leader, the group of fish hunters in the large river are strangers to me. I see those around who are formless, colourless, substance-less. They are non-dramatic. They are—Amal, Bimal, Kamal. And Indrajit.201

Thence, the collective voice gives rise/prominence/importance to the single word: ‘Indrajit./ Indrajit./ Indrajit.’202 It is difficult to find reasons for, or logical cohesion of, the repetitive utterance of a single name. The writer would shout a little while ago on hearing, FOURTH SPECTATOR: Nirmalkumar— WRITER: (Suddenly, shouts) No! [Silence. Astonishment in the eyes of the four. Bodies still.] Amal, Vimal, Kamal, Nirmal—this can’t be. There must be some other name. There must be! What is your name? [Stage lights put out. Complete darkness. Amal, Vimal, Kamal stepped back. Fourth spectator is at the centre of the stage. Writer’s voice in darkness.] What is your name? FOURTH SPECTATOR: Indrajit Roy. WRITER: Why did you say Nirmal then?203

Like the old man in Sararattir, the writer of Ebong Indrajit not only foresees/predicts—‘There must be some other name. There must be’—but he almost pressurizes the spectator to reveal the truth. We have already seen in Chapter Three that it is the Sircari voice that must sound or surface in order to direct the reader/audience, even at the cost of the text. However, an obscure reality, on the one hand, movement in dreamland and indication of utopia, on the other, render mystique and ambiguous quality in many of the Third Theatre plays. Hattamalar Opare, Rupkathar Kelenkari, Sagina Mahato, Spartacus, Michhil, Bhoma, Lakshmichharar Panchali, Sinri, Natyakarer Sandhane Tinti Charitra, Gandi, Nadite, and others, are either situated in the fairyland or concluded with abrupt positive resolution/indication. There is an undeniable ‘simplification, sometimes bordering on propaganda’204 in the concluding idea of these plays. Sircar’s entanglement in his own problematic can be resolved only in dreamland, fairyland, utopia, and abruption. Sudden positive conclusions through wishful thinking are just one way ‘to have a dream for the dream to come true’. Another way of recovery is the use of songs and poetry. From the proscenium plays to the Third Theatre stage, all of Sircar’s plays lack quality songs and poems. In the rich history of Bengali poetry, his poems seem to be the expressions of an unskilled and unrestrained writer. As in theatre, one has to learn the art of writing poems. However, apart from creating a rhythmic effect through elusive, telegraphic language in some of the plays, songs (and poems) rescue the playwright from the inescapable impasse. Critics may find remote similarity with folk traditions in this practice, for which no historical evidence has been found as of now, but, textually, they help create an evasive route with an apparent philosophical discourse—depth, poignancy, pathos, perceptibility, universality, etc.—in order to overcome the complication. The utopian ‘ugliness’, as perceived by Judith Malina, and unreliability are adorned with lyricism that makes Sircar’s audience/reader a prisoner of enigmatic theatricality. ‘In short, it is precisely when the author’s work becomes its own end that it regains a mediating character: the author conceives of literature as an end, the world restores it to him as a means: and it is in this perpetual inconclusiveness that the author rediscovers the world….’205

Six A THEATRE OF CONTRADICTIONS

No Boundaries. (From L to R) Dipankar Datta, Baidyanath, Samad, Shanta Datta, Sandip Saha, Murari Chakrabarty, Chhaya Mandal, Bisakha Ray, and Badal Sircar in Gandi. Production: Satabdi, n.d.; (official) direction: Badal Sircar. Source: A former theatre worker.

Whatever the accidents, the compromises, the concessions and the political adventures, whatever the technical, economic, or even social changes which history brings us, our society is still a bourgeois society.… True, there are revolts against bourgeois ideology. This is what one generally calls the avant-garde. But these revolts are socially limited, they remain open to salvage … these revolts always get their inspiration from a very strongly made distinction between the ethically and the politically bourgeois: what the avant-garde contests is the bourgeois in art or morals…; but as for political contestation, there is none. What the avant-garde does not tolerate about the bourgeoisie is its language, not its status. This does not necessarily mean that it approves of this status; simply, it leaves it aside. Whatever the violence of the provocation, the nature it finally endorses is that of ‘derelict’ man, not alienated man; and derelict man is still Eternal Man … it is through its ethic that the bourgeoisie pervades…: bourgeois norms are experienced as the evident laws of a natural order—the further the bourgeois class propagates its representations, the more naturalized they become. The fact of the bourgeoisie becomes absorbed into an amorphous universe, whose sole inhabitant is Eternal Man, who is neither proletarian nor bourgeois.1

After discussing the Third Theatre plays, we realize that Sircar had been trying to create a dramatic discourse, which did not exist before in Bengal, though it attracted severe criticisms from mainstream theatre practitioners.2 With a few exceptions, the proscenium stage of the 1960s was still lingering on clichéd adaptations of Western drama that were scarcely related to the actual problems of the country. In such a situation, Sircar appeared as an exponent of a theatre of synthesis—what he named a Third Theatre.3 What is this ‘synthesis’ that Sircar was claiming? In explanation, he laid stress on striking at the foundation of the division between urban and rural theatre in order to create an attachment/association between them through a theatre of synthesis, that is, the Third Theatre.4 But there is no ground, from his exposition, to contend that his target audience was the rural mass. We have understood one thing very clearly, that his plays are thoroughly urban in nature and his appreciators are principally the educated elite, although there have been occasions when we came to see that the rural audience, here and there, also appreciate his plays. To explore this statement, and his theories, let us now examine his four books, or, more accurately, booklets—The Third Theatre, The Changing Language of Theatre: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Memorial Lecture 1982, Theatre-er Bhasha (in Bengali), and Voyages in the Theatre: Shri Ram Memorial Lectures 1992—and some assorted interviews,

articles, and essays. In his general discussion of theatre, Sircar distinguished two practices: Western proscenium theatre and folk theatres of India, which have their respective roots in historically developed parallel cultural traditions in cities and villages. According to Sircar, while the former spread ‘progressive’ ideas and ideologies, the latter remained ‘heavy with reactionary principles’, but both had been subjected to economic coercion. In such a condition, an ‘honest artist’ would first of all like to reach the working class through folk theatre. The only way to fulfilling such an endeavour was to think about developing an ‘alternative theatre’: a third form of theatre, essential for those who were craving for a change of era, the discharge of culture from the grip of commerce, and establishing a foundation for true and free folk theatre.5 It is noteworthy that Sircar was very conscious about his ‘honesty’, and would inculcate that in the reader intermittently. In fact, the words ‘honest’ and ‘honesty’ popped up quite often in his Theatre-er Bhasha, The Third Theatre, as quoted in previous chapters, and elsewhere. However, the concept of an ‘alternative theatre’ came to the mind of this ‘honest artist’ after his first encounter with theatre-in-the-round, which, most certainly, had the greatest influence on the Third Theatre, where Indian folk tradition is discerned, after an excruciating rigorous investigation, only as an ‘outsider’. My faith in anganmancha did not grow overnight. The idea came when I first saw theatre in the round abroad in 1958. Afterwards, having seen, read, discussed, practised theatre, written plays more and more, gradually some ideas about the relation between actor and audience became clearer. After 13 years, on the evening of 24 October 1971, the first attempt was made at the ABTA hall in Calcutta.6

Elsewhere, he wrote, ‘There is a permanent hall now in Paris, where all plays are performed in the round. There I saw a play in 1964, which increased my admiration even more.’7 A few years before Sircar abandoned proscenium theatre, Stephen Joseph had written, ‘Theatre in the round, an extreme form of open stage, can be looked on as an enemy to the conventional theatre, … where the audience more or less surrounds a central stage, so that if the actor stands in the middle and turns round he always has as many people behind him as in front of him.’8 He went on to suggest, ‘[T]heatre in the round lays claim to being a very primitive form of theatre, probably the common beginning for most formal drama that is known to us. In the Middle Ages it was used in a

specially developed form and in modern times it has reappeared, notably in the USA, but also in Europe.’9 Joseph commented that the tradition of theatre in the round had been kept alive chiefly by ‘folk plays and amateur performances’.10 He observed: The possible continuity of theatre in the round in England is matched by the survival of folk plays in India, performed from time immemorial at crossroads where villagers assemble of [sic] an evening and surround the performers. Again, on the seashore near a big town the carpet salesman sets up a complete theatre in the round constructed swiftly with bamboo, in order to display his wares. In India, too, the poet, suddenly inspired, begins his song; the audience gathers round him and, in response to the rapt attention of his listeners, he acts alone the different characters in the story. Performing in this way, the guru depends on the fundamental magic of theatre, more powerful because it calls for no secondary aids. Small wonder that Rabindranath Tagore wrote: [‘]The theatres which have been set up in India today, in imitation of the West, are too elaborate to be brought to the door of all. In them the creative richness of the poet and player is overshadowed by the mechanical wealth of the capitalist. If the Hindu spectator has not been too far infected with the greed for realism; if the Hindu artist has any respect for his own craft and skill, the best thing they can do for themselves is to regain their freedom by making a clean sweep of the costly rubbish that has accumulated and is now clogging the stage.[’]11

We never come across such simple examples in Sircar’s treatises, despite his practice being similar to theatre in the round in many respects. He would rather criticize folk tradition as ‘heavy with backward or reactionary ideology’12 without making any distinction; Tagore is to be seen nowhere. (In a few informal interactions, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay revealed to me that Sircar acquired more comprehensive knowledge about Tagore’s plays and Greek theatre as an MA student at the department of comparative literature at Jadavpur University, from 1989 to 1992, where Bandyopadhyay was a teacher at that point of time.) It was Bandyopadhyay who had first pointed out, over one such discussion, that what Sircar had conceptualized about the Third Theatre had been discussed and dramatized much before by Tagore. In many of Tagore’s plays, the stage, where all the actions take place, is conceived as a street. Not just that, in Tagore’s pioneering 1902 essay ‘Rangamancha’, he advocated doing away with the act–scene schema, the backdrops, the distance between the performers and the audience (which do not exist in Jatra: the reason why Tagore liked this folk form), and the ‘useless’ expenditure in British theatricals.13 In the preface to his drama Tapati, also, Tagore argued against the ‘childish’ European practice of using

backdrops on the stage. To him that was an ‘eyewash’: poetic imagination was sufficient for the poet; external help was not at all a help, rather an impediment, as much injustice to the poet as irreverence to the reader, and sometimes an expression of audacity.14 Perhaps Sircar’s unfamiliarity with these writings led to the glaring omission of Tagore’s influence on the making of his theatre discourse. In Sircar’s case, some doubts creep in when we carefully read his wellknown statement in The Third Theatre on the European and American influence. He claimed that his thinking process had been justified by the experience of Jatra, Tamasha, Bhawai, Nautanki, Kathakali, Chhou, and Manipuri dance forms, and ‘also by’ his acquaintance with/observation of theatre-in-the round in London in 1957 and in Paris in 1963. He went on to mention the influence of all prominent Western theatre personalities, as we have come across in Chapter Four.15 Further emphasis was ‘also’ laid on the importance of discussions and interviews with a number of theatre exponents, the most noteworthy among them, according to Sircar, was Grotowski. According to him, after he had started applying his concepts in theatre, in order to enrich himself, he went to the USA on fellowship to work with Schechner, and got the opportunity to interact with Beck and Malina. After offering this brief history of his formative period, interestingly, in order to portray his prior knowledge of the Indian traditional practices, Sircar summarized thus: The above account may give an impression that I am influenced by the experimental theatre of Europe and America and am trying to import it to India. My personal experience is quite different. What I found is that the theatre workers of the West are learning a lot from the Indian folk theatre and dance forms and are realising the value of the use of the live performer and of direct communication, while we in our pride in city theatre are neglecting what is there all round us.16

The word ‘also’ is very important in his description, signifying that he was aware of those folk traditions of India beforehand; then he came by the foreign traditions. From his autobiography (discussed in the Chapters Two and Four), we clearly know that it was the other way round. Before leaving Calcutta (and even after his return), he was barely in contact with such indigenous forms of India, and a little earlier, we read his comments about the influence of theatre-in-the round on the Third Theatre. The tenuous structural resemblance between some of the traditional forms

that Sircar mentioned (Jatra, Bhawai, Nautanki, Manipuri Jatra, Basanta Ras, and Lai Haraoba17)—which have many common characteristics—and the Third Theatre cannot be considered as folk influence on the style of his dramatic expression. The usage of songs and poetry does not necessarily justify the influence of folk traditions either. In Chapter One, we have discussed the politics of incorporating songs and dances of Jatra and other traditional forms within the colonial Bengali proscenium theatre. They were in use in theatre not as an expression of proscenium theatre’s indebtedness to the folk tradition, or the latter’s overpowering and compelling influence to create a discourse of mutuality. If we go further back into the past, it would be clear that the tradition of mixing prose and poetry has been continuing historically ‘[s]ince the oldest times’,18 and does not have exclusive connection with folk traditions. In Sircar’s theatre, lyricism was an instrument, as we have discussed in the previous chapter, to cast a spell on the audience and overcome the situational impasse. In fact, I think, in the use of ‘simple or involved’ ideas ‘in a poetic form’, we can trace Joan Littlewood’s influence on him.19 However, in the sudden positive and moralistic turn of events, at the end of some of the important plays of Sircar, Sumanta Banerjee observed conformity with ‘folk tradition’s theatrical norm’,20 which is an oversimplified idea. Drawing a conclusion from the nature of finality in the end of Sircar’s plays, and finding affinity with ‘folk tradition’s theatrical norm’ on that basis, seem far-fetched; other factors must be considered in this regard. Besides, classical Sanskrit literature is also strewn with these characteristics; folk traditions cannot be considered as their only carrier, though there is enough scope to understand the exchange of ideas between them. Banerjee also found folk elements like Kabigan, Panchali, and Kirtan in Sircar’s theatrical structure,21 but did not elaborate on traces of Kirtan and Panchali, nor did I find any. There is no touch of Panchali in Lakshmichharar Panchali; the play is modelled on ‘urban popular’22 Kabigan, though Sircar claimed to have incorporated the folk form of Tarja.23 Bhul Rasta is claimed to be written after Pandavani. After the examination of many interviews, I came across one with Adrish Biswas where Sircar clearly confessed that he did not learn anything from folk theatre; whatever he learnt was superficial. Here is the translation of that excerpt: SIRCAR: When did I find time to learn folk theatre?

BISWAS: When you use Kathakata or Panchali, you take those from folk theatre— SIRCAR: Not directly. Did so from superficial conception. Seen them at some point of time, some things I know, some are my ideas, developed into a shape from all. There is no experience of learning in this.24

For all these reasons, Sircar’s criticisms of the city theatre’s disregard for indigenous forms are not beyond question. He questioned the Indian urban theatre whether its neglect had arisen from the absence of the stage in native theatre, resulting in a distance from Jatra, Tamasha, and Bhawai. He wanted to embarrass the urban theatre workers for their sophistication, and snobbery inherited from the colonial construction of the urban–rural divide.25 Without questioning the merit of his observations, it must be said that Sircar’s theatre was not much different from the urban theatre prevalent in India. Did Sircar himself not import elements from Western countries for his theatre of synthesis, in which the Indian traditions were pushed to one corner? Did mention of them not give his theatre and Sircar himself an ideological and intellectual lift, making his theory and practice seem a feat of magnanimity and erudition? How should we evaluate the following assessment? Folk theatre is popular in the villages even today. But the subject of that theatre is principally heavy with backward or reactionary ideology. Adoration, glorification of the gods and goddesses, narratives of the kings are there. Suggesting: tolerate hunger, torture, injustice as divine-providence, or the consequence of actions in previous births; freedom is either in heaven or in the afterlife. Or, the King is the representative of God, allegiance to Him is supreme; therefore, if the King is bad, the only way out is to introduce a good one and that will also be done by Him; citizens have nothing to do. The actual conditions of women—male-trampled, lowly, kept under house arrest, socially inactive—are beautifully wrapped up in portrayals of the chaste wife and all-enduring mother.26

If we are to accept this argument, not only folk theatre, but the whole gamut of Indian literature from the Vedic period till the advent of colonial era would be redundant. His uncritical generalizations do not discuss the reasons for the ‘backward’ or ‘reactionary’ nature of folk theatre and, thus, convict folk theatre in perpetuity. Interestingly, Sircar expressed his views even after visiting several villages and Bhoma’s phenomenal success. In Theatre-er Bhasha, he also informs us, ‘Third Theatre is not an imitation of folk theatre, but it has a lot to learn from folk theatre’.27 What is this ‘lot’? Sircar does not spare a single word after this by way of elaboration and digresses to issues like directness of statement, speech, action, and honesty instead, which, it

could be argued, he actually learnt from other theatre traditions. One does not have to be an expert in traditional or modern theatre to know that directness of statement is the primary condition of any drama. How a director or playwright achieves the goal is a completely different issue altogether. It has no exclusive connection with folk culture. Kathryn Hansen noted, ‘This mode of presentation relied on none of the conventions of rural theatre, but it was aimed at establishing within an urban context the same sense of communal involvement and ritualistic action often found in folk theatre.’28 Behind any traditional form lies the participation of the community as an inherent characteristic. This collective, spontaneous participation, which is its ingrained quality, endows such representations with a unique communal feature unlike the urban theatre process. The sense of the collective in urbanity is more calculated, imposed, dependent on erudition, prudence, knowledge, and also individualistic no matter how many people are involved, or whether the presence of money is relegated or absolutely absent. Sircar’s enterprises cannot transcend these limitations. Schechner’s observation is more apt in this regard: ‘Sircar’s theatre became both more traditionally Indian and more experimental in the Euro-American sense.’29 This traditionality (that is, the Bengaliness, as mentioned by Bharucha30), and ‘intercultural basis’31 might have led to the acceptance of some of Sircar’s plays and workshop techniques in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, the UK, and Canada. There is no wonder, then, that it was not so much the IPTA movement that suggests similarities with the Third Theatre, but the Western theatre practitioners that find a place in Sircar’s manifesto. However, in the preface to Parikrama, Samik Bandyopadhyay observed that after the IPTA, it was perhaps the Third Theatre in which a direction towards a socially aware ideology had been found.32 In the same book, Dulal Kar shared his interaction with a middle-aged person, who, after watching Hah Hah Anahar (Hah Hah Hunger) at Kapileshwar High School, said that the performance was reminiscent of an IPTA show that he had seen long ago.33 This statement made Kar think of themselves as the successors to the IPTA movement.34 Samik Bandyopadhyay’s presumptive statement can perhaps be accepted, for a flickering ray of the IPTA’s distant past could be seen on that tour, but it is

groundless to accept Erin O’Donnell’s assertive conclusion that the Bengal chapter of the IPTA was ‘instrumental in laying an artistic foundation and trajectory for revolutionary playwrights such as … Badal Sircar….’35 Sircar mentioned the IPTA only as a passing reference in the first volume of his autobiography,36 and in an interview,37 not giving much importance to the association’s dramatic influence on the formation of his theatre. Groups owing allegiance to the Third Theatre conducted a three-day sanskritik parikrama or cultural tour in 1986 with a motive to connect with villagers,38 to know how they lived, talked, and sang, besides earning their livelihood.39 From the following excerpt, it would be clear that this tour, apparently charged with high moral principles, was naive but assertive in nature: We want to go to the interiors. We are interested in those villages. The old man put his hand on my back with a smile—I came to this remote, grossly backward village from Beliaghata40 in 1970, opened a school for children. Today I feel I barely entered the village. You want to enter in seven days! I came back, my head lowered.41

In spite of this realization/revelation, the participant wrote, ‘I want to delve into the recesses of his soul through theatre, want to say by shaking his shoulder—how long will you be confined, naked, like a giant tree, eyes, head lowered….’42 In tune with Sircar, the members of the People’s Art Theatre of Ashoknagar thought, ‘[O]ur art should be meant for the large numbers of working class. From that perspective, we set out for the village tour.’43 From such accounts, it would seem that a few enlightened liberators tried to kindle the light of knowledge and revolution in just three days (which later turned into infrequent visits) within the people who live in a completely different reality. To the theatre workers, the definition of poverty, deprivation, identity, and consciousness of the villagers was vague; that was why, like ‘honest’ urbane bhadralok, they ventured into that kind of project. Even in the framework of Sircar’s Bhoma, the typicality of that kind of voyage, collection of information, and emergence of an accidental character had been present. Samik Bandyopadhyay describes Sircar’s attitude towards Bhoma thus: ‘Bhoma becomes the symbol that grows out of … documentation, which lacks a total experience.’44 Notwithstanding its immense historical importance, the fact that the whole trip was assisted by the poor villagers with food and lodging45 strikes me as

somewhat embarrassing, even though one can possibly defend it by invoking such concepts as Eugenio Barba’s Barter Theatre.46 We were made to understand the Third Theatre in terms of austerity and self-sponsorship by Sircar. In that case, was it not possible to self-finance the trip? Not only that, after the performances, they used to spread a piece of cloth in the middle, in front of the spectators, for voluntary donations, which had become common practice in Satabdi’s Calcutta performances. And the response was overwhelming.47 Could they have not dispensed with this ritual? Was it necessary to squeeze out contributions in cash or kind from the villagers, for whom earning a few mouthfuls of food was difficult in itself? There are no detailed written accounts of the subsequent gram parikramas, but from the comments of my interviewees, I understood that the character of those village tours did not change. Questions, some of which are already mentioned in Parikrama, also arise about the nature of performances: did the villagers understand the plays? The reportage suggested that many villagers said they had (i) understood the plays, (ii) understood the central issues of the plays, or (iii) did not understand the plays at all. Most of Sircar’s Third Theatre plays depend on their linguistic merit. While they depend on words, dispensing with a storyline,48 characters,49 sets and props,50 in the performance space, the bodies and faces of the actors, which have to be read by the spectators in a constant state of flux and action,51 become important.52 Some of these aspects are not new to folk theatre, such as continuity of events (flow of the text without respecting continuity of time and separation of space, action ‘from one time to another, one space to another, without any break’, ‘events occurring at two or more different places at two or more different times’ enacted simultaneously, sometimes expanding the space, sometimes telescoping the concept of time), emphasis on the performers’ body, openness of representation, and so on.53 Readers can remember Kanhailal’s observations here (discussed in Chapter Four). But the context of Third Theatre detaches itself from folk theatre’s reality when the playwright wants to deal with the problems of people like himself—urban middle class people—a minority in the society no doubt, but an important minority, and moreover they are people he knows intimately. He may be more concerned in their problems in general than those of certain

individuals; and therefore he may find that prototypes rather than characters would be more suitable to express that the problems are not of one, but of many.54

Third Theatre is an enterprise of an urban theatre worker talking about and dealing with urban problems through an urban mind and urban consciousness. When he writes about his own milieu, the perspective is comprehensible to the urban bhadralok audience, except perhaps for its structural complexity to the theatrically uninitiated, but when he starts sharing his experiences of a village tour in a play, he looks at a distant past, or maybe the present, through binoculars, through an urban eye. He, in fact, admitted this in an interview with Samik Bandyopadhyay: What I hadn’t known yesterday I know today, and I have friends who do not know it, even today, and I would like to communicate to them the little that I have just come to know about life in the village. Thus Bhoma was written for people like us, aimed at our kind of people, not meant to be performed in the villages. But when we took Bhoma to village audiences, then found a point of identification in the issues it touched—underground water, agriculture, their problems, land relations—and its departure from the gods and goddesses and kings and rulers of all earlier theatre.55

This class-consciousness detaches him from those living in the villages described in either Bhoma, Parikrama, or elsewhere. He tries to control them, as we have seen in Chapter Four, forgetting their own vocabulary; his class identity prevails. He may import their stories, even their style (as we have seen with regard to the folk influence in a very limited way), in terms of dynamics of performance, in order to prove his humanism; the magnetism increases, but the endeavour could be construed as appropriation or even intellectual adventurism. Perhaps, the Barthian ‘inconclusiveness’56 helped the villagers exult with enthusiasm,57 and share their understanding,58 mixed reaction,59 or ignorance and incomprehension.60 The reason for their comprehension may also lie in the fact that most of the plays were not selected from Sircar’s ‘complex and sophisticated’61 repertoire, excepting Hattamalar Opare and Lakshmichharar Panchali, both of which are easily understandable, without any complexity.62 This proposition was corroborated by Dulal Kar, the leading figure of Pathasena. From his personal experience, he felt that it was never easy to understand a play like Khat Mat Kring. The village audience, in his opinion, might have understood complex plays like Spartacus as a whole, but it was important to feel every line of it. It never

happened that the intricate plays were understood completely by everybody, due to the complexity of Sircar’s plays. At a parikrama at Jangipara, in the district of Hooghly, West Bengal, one of the organizing committee members asked Kar, after the performance of Sada Kalo, why they did not produce a Bengali play.63 The play seemed so complex, that even a Bengali text seemed alien to a relatively educated Bengali audience. Tapan Banerjee, one of Satabdi’s earlier members, gave the following interesting information in this regard: ‘The audience could not accept many words of Badal-babu. Many of his word-choices were incomprehensible to them. But we, who have acted, saw that by trimming many words, he used choreography to make things intelligible.’64 Instead of identifying and specifying the actual problems of representation, audience–actor–text relationships, and revealing what Tapan Banerjee and Dulal Kar said in great detail, Sircar reiterated the acceptance of his texts like Spartacus, which, according to him, ‘was always a sure success with village audiences, in spite of its sophisticated structure, absence of a story line, and historical reference’.65 He did not want to take the problem of ‘not understanding’ his plays into consideration after a certain point of time.66 Sircar did not want to understand the problem for obvious reasons, but it is important for us to comprehend the fundamental nature of village performances and the reception of his plays in the rural community. Regrettably, unlike Parikrama, we do not have any recorded audience reaction to its village performances, or responses to other plays like Bhoma. In my interview with Sircar, I asked him about the foreign influences with regard to formulating the structure of his theatre. Instead of answering directly, he digressed to such issues as his absence of ‘compunction’ about ‘copying’ from other sources like The Caucasian Chalk Circle, etc.67 In The Third Theatre, too, this evasion is clear. I would like to remind the readers of his statement in The Third Theatre,68 which elaborated his native and foreign influences, although explaining inappropriately his own observations. Even if the West was being influenced by Indian folk theatre, how does it help us understand that Sircar was not importing those ideas from the West (see Schechner’s statement on teaching Kathakali to Sircar in an interview with Cobina Gillitt in Chapter Four), instead of following them in the villages of his own country? In fact, his position in practice is strikingly closer to

Schechner’s concept of Environmental Theatre or Grotowski’s Poor Theatre rather than Jatra, Tamasha, Bhawai, Nautanki, Kathakali, Chhou, and Manipuri dances. Sircar stated that The Third Theatre was ‘not an academic thesis’ undertaken to prove his theories on the bases of comprehensive research. It was rather a ‘practical project’ based on hands-on theatre works presented to various theatre groups and spectators. Therefore, he thought, the effect of his project could be evaluated by watching the productions, and that the theoretical discourses are secondary descriptive narratives.69 He also claimed that many theatrical questions ‘raised in the thinking process’, which had been substantiated by his experience of Indian folk tradition and Western influences, and were answered according to his own observation, experience, and understanding.70 But in a comparative study, we find so many similarities, as I have already mentioned, between Sircar’s doctrines and those of Littlewood, Lyubimov, Grotowski, Schechner, Beck, and Malina, to name the few he named (and remembering what he said of the Western influences and the chronology of the development of his idea of the Third Theatre), that we start doubting whether there were any such original theatrical questions ‘raised in the thinking process’ (and later substantiated by other sources), as he has put forward in his other books as well. It may be his style of writing (or talking as he did in the interview with me) without acknowledging the credit in notes—especially when someone is claiming to introduce an idea for the first time in a particular time, space, and language— but academically or otherwise, he simply seems to have appropriated, with serious shortcomings though. I need to cite examples here in support of my stand. In a number of interviews, Sircar described himself as a theatre worker (not a playwright or dramatist or director) and asserted that many of his works were manifestations of collective effort. Littlewood’s thoughts on the nature of her direction might sound relevant in this context: ‘I do not believe in the supremacy of the director, designer, actor or even of the writer. It is through collaboration that this knockabout art of theatre survives and kicks.’71 Like Littlewood, Sircar also searched for an aesthetic, a philosophy of theatre, and gradually it began to emerge, basing itself on: (1) An awareness of the social issues of the time, and in that sense, a political theatre. (2) A

theatrical language that working people could understand, but that was capable of reflecting, when necessary, ideas, either simple or involved, in a poetic form. (3) An expressive and flexible form of movement, and a high standard of skill and technique in acting,72

But the ambit was much limited on all counts. We know, and Sircar also acknowledged, that at one point in time the members of Satabdi were given lectures on a variety of topics by scholars like Samik Bandyopadhyay and Sibaji Bandyopadhyay. We find a similar description of Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, which also stressed on the denial of stardom: All members took the same salary, and, like the founders of the Moscow Art Theatre, vowed there would be no ‘stars’ among them…. The artistic work never consisted of merely presenting productions: teaching and learning were always important, too, and the company mounted a series of weekend schools, aimed mostly at working-class would-be actors. ‘We can earn our living playing and teaching locally’, Joan Littlewood wrote in 1947. ‘[I]t would be self-defeating just to go on mounting shows.’ The schools consisted of a well-planned mixture of active classes, discussions and social events.… Training was continued when the company was on tour, and thus, over years, a shared company ‘language’ was developed. … The Theatre Workshop syllabus, like that of the earlier Theatre Union, began with studying, both theatre—history and theory—and politics. From the period of Last Edition before the Second World War, when members of the company researched the various subjects that were to be incorporated before Ewan MacColl actually created the script, at least until the time the company settled at Stratford East, the politics was paramount, especially because of MacColl’s commitment, though it should be remembered that Littlewood, at that time at least, considered herself a Marxist.73

Of course, the members of Satabdi did not live together like Theatre Workshop members, except for some excursions here and there; and there was no salary system (members had to earn their bread and butter from other sources and contribute to the group according to their capability). But some eminent scholars were invited to deliver lectures on different issues exclusively to the group (though that too stopped subsequently), and Sircar was certainly the last word in the whole development of Satabdi. Similarities with the style of Lyubimov’s production are also noticeable when we come to know that his ‘stagings were … almost always a mix of journalism, social observation, moral commentary, drama, and theatrical art. One primary reason for the Taganka’s importance as a social phenomenon was that it addressed not only the audience’s aesthetic interests, but also its

moral concerns: “You don’t need me if all you want are glorious voices and nice costumes,” Lyubimov has said.’74 Of all contemporary movements, he was also influenced by Grotowski’s Poor Theatre to the extent of virtually transcribing Grotowski’s words: ‘By gradually eliminating whatever proved superfluous, we found that there can exist theatre without make-up, without autonomic costume and scenography, without a separate performance area (stage), without lighting and sound effects, etc. It cannot exist without the actor-spectator relationship of perceptual, direct, “live” communion.’75 Sircar, in his seminal Bengali book Theatre-er Bhasha, drew an illustrative difference between ritual and theatre,76 which is almost word for word similar to Figure 4.4 in Schechner’s Performance Theory.77 In Sircar, we have

while in Schechner, this Figure 4.4

In the same chapter (‘From Ritual to Theater and Back: The EfficacyEntertainment Braid’), Schechner talks about ‘fragmentation’ of ‘urban pluralism and freedom of choice’,78 which has also been touched upon in Theatre-er Bhasha.79 In Chapter 5, ‘Toward a Poetics of Performance’, Schechner details the class character of the proscenium stage. He, at one place, says, ‘As the proscenium theater developed from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries the forestage jutting into the house receded until it all but vanished, eliminating any sharing of space between the stage and house’.80 Sircar glosses over the issue in one line: ‘In order to create realistic illusion, the projected part of the stage among the audience receded gradually into the cover of the frame from the nineteenth century.’81 The way he represents the matter leads one to believe that the observation is his own. Like Schechner, Sircar also professes the differences between TV and theatre, but more superficially, as he has done with almost all the issues cited.82 In fact, when he says, ‘theatre is—now, here’,83 we remember the first point of classification of ‘actual’84 by Schechner: ‘[P]rocess, something happens here and now.’85 A little later, Schechner elaborates: ‘When I think of process, I think of something that occurs in fact here and now: the melting of the iceliths in Fluids, the dodging and ultimate taking of spears in the Tiwi trial, the dancing of the Hevehe. These processes are not gimmicks, but fundamental

elements of the performance structure.’86 Sircar’s much advocated convictions on performer–audience proximity87 are also present in Schechner’s theory,88 though with more detailed analysis and historical perspective—none of which, unfortunately, is discernible in Sircar’s writings. Although Schechner first published Performance Theory in 1977, as Essays on Performance Theory, 1970–1976,89 he mentioned its genesis: ‘I wrote the essays in this book between 1966 and 1976.’90 Some essays had been already printed—‘Approaches’ appeared as ‘Approaches to Theory/Criticism’ in the TDR, The Drama Review in 1966 and ‘Actuals’, as ‘Actuals: A Look into Performance Theory’ in The Rare Action: Essays in Honor of Francis Fergusson (1970).91 We already know that Sircar met Schechner in 1971, he was aware of his production Dionysus in 69, and the following year visited the USA to see the work of Schechner’s The Performance Group; so, it would not be a mistake to deduce that many of Sircar’s ideas were already influenced by those of Schechner. Of course, there were other illustrious thinkers who also played a great role in shaping the concept of the Third Theatre. Bringing about social change through theatre is the key objective in Sircar’s books,92 but a closer and thorough scrutiny reveals that much earlier, ‘In Europe, The Living Theatre developed into an ensemble that lived and worked together, emphasizing theatre as a tool for social change’.93 The idea has been explained by Judith Malina thus: ‘In the Living Theatre we try to combine each of our lives, every aspect of our lives—our sexual life, our domestic life, our economic life, our personal life, our artistic life, our political life—into as holistic a community as possible.’94 Although Sircar reiterated a number of times that in his Third Theatre, there should not be any distance between the performer and spectators, in order to efface the superiority of the performers,95 or the illusion of light and darkness, the meaning of an audience was much greater for Malina: What the Living Theatre is trying to say to them is to be hopeful that they can participate in changing the structures of things, that they can make changes. Our whole effort toward audience participation has always been with the hope that we can make people feel less helpless, that they can be participants in the social structure, and that we’re not just helpless sheep going to the slaughter.96

Sircar’s idea of using the bodies of the performers is confined to the

‘poverty’ of theatre. He thought that As the Third Theatre should not be dependent on money, it has to be palpable, portable, and affordable; poverty has to be accepted—the logic can flow thus. I would make use of theatre as a weapon, but that theatre would be artistically poor, that is, the weapon would be blunt—that cannot be accepted. If I do not agree, the whole force would be on that human body, the inevitable element of theatre.97

Though in the Third Theatre this human body did not evolve much, Julian Beck considered the theatrical body as an instrument for ‘revolt because we are fighting for our lives. In the outmoded theatre, sitting motionless and silent in the dark, the process-of-atrophy intensifies.’98 In Sircar, the voice of protest suffers pitifully from typical Bengali (bhadralok) middle-class inertia and hesitation. His plays constantly alternate between politicization and de-politicization: on the one hand, his plays would criticize social conditions, while on the other, it would take an ambiguous, obscure position by diluting them leading to a Barthian ‘inconclusiveness’, as I have already mentioned. In ‘The Seven Imperatives of Contemporary Theatre’, Beck suggested that the theatre should be brought ‘outside of the cultural and economic limitations of institutionalized theatre’, so that it should be free, participation should be open, and creation would be ‘collective and spontaneous’.99 By the word ‘free’ Beck intended to say that in a free theatre there should be ‘no rules, no end. It ends when everyone has gone, when everyone feels like ending it.’100 To Beck, the definition of free theatre was the freedom of action: ‘[A]nything that anyone does is perfect.’101 In a handout for a special benefit performance for an Italian theatre magazine Sipario, Malina wrote, ‘This is Free Theatre. Free Theatre is invented by the actors as they play it. Free theatre has never been rehearsed. We have tried Free Theatre. Sometimes it fails. Nothing is ever the same.’102 However, Beck went on to suggest that in free theatre no money was needed, and it was ‘a secret weapon of militant artist….’103 In some cases, to a certain degree, he also followed the collective play-making techniques (in Chapter Four, it has been mentioned that though Sircar advocated for this kind of production, it never happened with Satabdi), but among the varied ideas of free theatre of Malina and Beck, we find principally the aspect of monetary emancipation in Sircar’s theory of the Third Theatre.

I would like to discuss his widely known statement in this regard in the next section, but before that it must be pointed out categorically that I have no objection to Sircar’s borrowings from Western thinkers, or his preference for Western discourses. It was certainly his prerogative to find and select the sources from anywhere, but his emphasis on incorporating Indian traditions and unmentioned borrowings are certainly objectionable and subject to investigation. In my study, both synchronic and diachronic, it has been found that Sircar was influenced by Western theatre traditions with regard to conceptualizing the structural elements and the formation of the ideological foundation. That is why, while disseminating his principles in his writings, the style he maintained is highly undesirable. It is not becoming for an ‘honest artist’ laying greater stress on ‘social change’ (his concept of social change through theatre was also an imported idea, as we have seen) to omit his sources and present the ideas as his own, when they belong to somebody else. In the next chapter, I will discuss these issues in greater detail with regard to the contribution of his group members. It cannot be overlooked either that (i) Sircar failed to transcribe some of the important characteristics of the Western ideologues in his treatise, as mentioned above, and (ii) significantly rejected certain characteristics borrowed from his inspirers. He thought that Grotowski, besides making his theatre inexpensive, dispensed with ‘all other paraphernalia’ except for the actor’s body. But Grotowski’s Poor Theatre was not focused so much on the content. Rather, he paid attention to the formal ritual and philosophical aspects of theatre. In Schechner’s Environmental Theatre, a lot of money was spent on creating the environment. But Sircar’s theatre was anything but this lavish dependence on material resources. Besides, he never experimented with forms without an effective projection of content.104 ‘The Tantric basis of the Living Theatre of Beck and Malina could not influence Badal-babu’s theatre either.’105 Considering its inappropriateness in the Indian context, the sexuality and nudity of Living Theatre were not taken into consideration either.106 In The Third Theatre, Sircar shared the reason for embarking upon an alternative performance discourse: the concept of free theatre became a matter of attraction to him not because of the ‘poor’ Indian socio-economic conditions and unaffordable admission fees, but also for his belief in ‘equal

status’ of the performers and the audience in theatre. As theatre is a ‘human act’, the audience–actor relationship ought to be ‘free’ and unaffected by exterior elements. The concept of the admission fee brings about a buying– selling relation between the audience and the performers, heightened by the difference of admission charges, and sitting arrangements in theatre halls, almost without any exception. Therefore, in pursuit of a ‘human act’, ‘free theatre’ was chosen to create a space for the spectators’ coming in and going out freely and voluntary donations, if they wished to contribute.107 His apparently laudable ideas to emancipate theatre from the shackles of monetary transactions, in order to convey the message of freedom, and social change, continued throughout his career. But one wonders at the contradictory approach of Sircar’s assertion of rejecting money and the practice of seeking ‘voluntary’ donations from the spectators. If the Third Theatre believes in the denial of monetary transactions, why does Satabdi not stand for its complete rejection? This question drives one to investigate further. The reason, as Satabdi members told me informally, was to meet the cost of the performances, which clearly suggests that they also depended on money, however small the sum might be. Their claims also reflected in the leaflets, which mentioned literally, ‘Your donation in the event arena is our resource’. See the encircled matter in the following leaflets. While the members of Satabdi stressed on necessity, Sircar’s explanation makes the very foundation of the Third Theatre completely unstable: Free theatre is open to everyone. Here, the entry is not dependent on money…. Which does not mean that the relationship with money makes theatre not free. Whatever money would come, would come as spontaneous contribution of the audience, not as entry fee. We would ask for that money, receive happily, not that the money is required to meet the cost. That donation is a sign of spontaneous participation of the audience….108

This apparently naive comment implies that money is a sign of spontaneity, and pecuniary contribution is a sign of spontaneous participation of the audience. Here, money is not important to enter the performance space; donations are voluntary. But if anyone pays (whatever amount the spectator wishes), that would be considered as the sign of spontaneous participation. The obvious questions arise: (i) what was the need for creating a system of donation/contribution? (ii) why would any kind of donation/contribution, in cash or kind, determine the nature of participation in an activity? Owing to stark vacuity, Sircar’s whole theory of the Third

Theatre crumbles and is reduced to be encapsulated in the capitalist discourse.

Anganmancha leaflet of 2005 for the productions of Raktakarabi by Pathasena (14

January), Jhagra Brittanta by Ayna (15 January), and Nadite by Satabdi (16 January) at Loreto Day School, Sealdaha (at 7 pm). It further says ‘Admission Open’. ‘Besides, we perform at Nandan (in front of the Bangla Academy), every month, first and third Sundays at 4 pm.’ The phone numbers of Badal Sircar and Kalyan Ghosh are also given. The contact details have been blurred in order to maintain privacy. Source: Author.

Anganmancha leaflet of 2006 for the productions of Bagh, Hattamalar Opare by Ayna, Satabdi (7 April), Jatiya Bir by Prayas, Jhargram (8 April), and Raktakarabi by Pathasena (9 April) at Loreto Day School, Sealdaha (at 7 pm). It further says that there would a photography exhibition on the 40 years of Satabdi (1967–2006). Like the previous leaflet, it also says ‘Admission Open’. ‘Besides, we perform at Nandan (in front of the Bangla Academy), every month, first and third Sundays at 4 pm.’ The phone numbers of Badal Sircar and Kalyan Ghosh are also given. The contact details have been blurred in order to maintain privacy. Source: Author.

Anganmancha leaflet of 2008 for the productions of Chand Baniker Pala by Pathasena (28 March), Pralap by Satabdi (29 March), and Shokprastab by Ayna (30 March) at Loreto Day School, Sealdaha (at 7 pm). ‘Admission Open’. ‘Besides, we perform at Nandan (in front of the Bangla Academy), every month, first and third Sundays at 4 pm.’

Contact details of Badal Sircar and Kalyan Ghosh are given. Additionally, Satabdi’s email address is also provided, which may, perhaps, be construed as the group’s growing conformity with capitalist means. The contact details have been blurred in order to maintain privacy. Source: Author.

In an interview with Abhijit Kar Gupta, Sircar said that since neither government nor private institutions believed in radical changes in society, it was pointless for a theatre worker like Sircar, to whom change was of utmost importance, to take grants from those sources. The opposite condition would subvert the purpose of his theatre. Whose theatre was it that he had been doing, whose purpose had been served—these questions would start appearing. Even if these institutions did not interfere with the content of the play or performance, they might indirectly stand in the way of the freedom of the director by not promising to finance all his productions and thereby restraining him from experimenting with anything which they might consider dangerous. Dependence on money, according to Sircar, thus creates selfcensorship.109 But reality speaks just the opposite: 1. Angan, the Third Theatre magazine, with which Sircar was closely associated not only as a contributor, but also as the advisor, carried advertisements by private agencies/institutions, and individuals: ‘Agarwal Steel Complex Limited’,110 ‘A.K. Sen (Industrial Consultant)’,111 ‘Singha Construction, Govt. Contractor & Order Suppliers’,112 ‘Saroj Enterprise Paper & Board Merchant’,113 to name a few. 2. While Sircar refused to participate in Seagull Books’ first theatre festival titled Shikar, or roots, objecting to the idea of sponsorship, he (along with Satabdi) participated in the theatre festival organized by Shyamanand Jalan’s Padatik in the 1980s, which was heavily supported by commercial sponsorship. In defence of their decision, a member of Satabdi later said that they would ‘use’ the experience of traditional forms gained from that festival. When Samik Bandyopadhyay questioned his approach to assessing cultural traditions/experience as capitalist ‘usable products’, Sircar cut him short ‘rudely’.114 3. In March 2011, two months before his demise, Sircar received the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards, or META, Lifetime

Achievement Award115 by the Mahindra group, a ‘US $16.9 billion multinational group based in Mumbai, India’.116 4. Though in 2010 he declined the Padma Bhushan award on flimsy grounds, in 1972, he accepted the Padma Shri, and in 1997, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Ratna Puraskar (Akademi Fellow). Samik Bandyopadhyay observed: Money is vulgar: the idea of Prastab; it poisons our lives, and money with power—these were absent in everyday activities of his group. It is true that he is not selling tickets. But is that not symbolic? Because, at one point of time he becomes an iconic figure. Perhaps, his theatre was not thronged with spectators [in the last stage], but what his foreign audience, who, being aware of Sircar’s international celebrity status, came to watch his group’s performances, contributed was not just one or two rupees. That is why, the denial of money and the voluntary contribution of the same became a symbolic gesture that ‘We are only collecting money’. But how much do you collect? Who are contributing? ‘I don’t take money, touch money’ and how you survive and what you do—many complications arise in between. It is not so simplistic that ‘We don’t sell tickets.’ Nothing is proved by selling or not selling. Initially, things were different, but then Badal-babu became a celebrity, an icon. It was much more important than how the group would think, what the character of the group would be, what Badal-babu’s role would be, and the relation between Sircar and the group. It became a much more complex thing.117

In the process of upholding the necessity for a change, it was Sircar who changed himself. Or, were these contradictions already present from the beginning, latent, lying in ambush? Which is why he had to keep asserting on ‘honest’ and ‘honesty’? For further discussion, see the following chapter. Interestingly, free admission of the spectators in a performance has been appreciated the most in Natyashastra as the sign of greatest offering among all duties of a king that would yield him mahaphalam.118 Grotowski is there in the Third Theatre, but, tragically, not the idea (of free theatre) of Bharata. His ideas of rejecting the proscenium theatre, all sorts of paraphernalia of the stage, and pecuniary assistance from any institutions are translated into the intimate form in anganmancha (and muktamancha). In such circumstances, it makes us curious to know how Sircar had managed to obtain the space for anganmancha. He must have managed to procure private/public spaces either on hire, or free of cost through personal contacts (as it happened at Loreto Day School in Sealdaha, Calcutta, and elsewhere). Even if the procurement was done free of cost—in which case the cost (of

maintenance/rent) must have been borne by Sircar’s well-wisher(s), and the members of Satabdi including Sircar became the beneficiary—the anganmancha productions cannot be considered as free theatre. Sircar needed the institutional safety, security, sanctity, and ‘paraphernalia’ of a concrete establishment in order to create the discourse of intimacy and directness in anganmancha. The moment he/Satabdi entered into such a (written or unwritten) contract, his/Satabdi’s principles were appropriated by the establishments, institutions, and, eventually, by the state; his ideology of renouncing money became blunt, inert, ineffective, and practically a colossal contradiction, bringing the exchange of money at the centre stage, albeit, sometimes, in different ways and in indirect manner. He became part of the institution. Quite interestingly, in reply to a question, Sircar defined Angan as an ‘enclosed space’.119 Perhaps this ‘enclosure’ translated into closeness made a significant part of his activities a closed affair. Critics have stressed on the ‘direct’, ‘uninhibited’ communicative structure120 of the Third Theatre; Sircar, on the other hand, talked about the importance of the human body, the inevitable element of theatre, but how this ‘directness’ is established, whether the physical proximity of the actor and audience is the only way to create the discourse of directness, or what the role of language is in it, remained largely out of consideration. Sircar thought that the actor– audience closeness in Spartacus was translated into ‘a degree’121 of direct communication with the audience. Here, the word ‘degree’ notably suggests that the ‘nearness’122 was perhaps not enough to create directness completely. Readers can also recall the observations made by Dulal Kar and Tapan Banerjee earlier in this chapter. The stimulating accounts of the performances of Spartacus by Sumanta Banerjee123 and Ananda Lal (in Chapter Four) certainly throw some light on the dynamism instilled into the actor–audience relationship, but from my personal experience, I can say that the other productions of Satabdi, including that of Bhoma, never seemed to be as ‘direct’ as it is widely claimed. I do not think that all of the Third Theatre productions were as dynamic as Spartacus. The prominence it enjoyed in The Third Theatre, Voyages in the Theatre, Theatre-er Bhasha, and elsewhere in Sircar’s interviews lends support to this idea. Besides, Banerjee and Lal expressed views from their anganmancha experience; Sircar talked about a small room production and not much about the Surendranath Park, or open-

air productions, where the character of field management must have been completely different from the nature of floor management in a small room. Did these two types of productions convey equal intensity and directness? A little later in Sircar’s statement, we will see that it could not be achieved for obvious reasons. The directness would surely dilute. In spite of Sircar’s silence in his doctrines on the nature of placing importance on the human body, it must be admitted that physical proximity and linguistic manoeuvre—deliverance of several issues in one breath in telegraphic sentences with precise words—certainly render a kind of ‘immediacy of communication between actors and audience’.124 The message, which ‘[i]nstead of advocating revolution with platitudinous speeches … is content with merely disturbing the consciousness of its spectators’,125 generally surpasses, outshines, and overshadows the performance discourses. Sircar has reiterated time and again of bringing change through theatre. In the beginning, he could not believe that theatre could be as effective as politics in ushering in that change.126 Gradually, he realized the potentiality of theatre. In the light of these statements, one can argue that the course of his development is a journey in search of a political discourse, which is not overtly political, nor is it purely cultural. The merger takes place in such a manner that ultimately it becomes a tool that can be better explained in Barthes’s words in the epigraph. It is a crisis of two opposite forces: being divorced form the people and desiring to be one of them. On the one hand, knowledge became his instrument in search of a new discourse; on the other, it paralyses him as an intellectual. His concepts of anganmancha and muktamancha are probably a manifestation of that contradiction. In spite of renouncing the mancha (that is, the stage), Sircar embraced it (angan + mancha = anganmancha; and mukta127 + mancha = muktamancha) to define his form of free theatre. His angan or mukta, in the process of creating a discourse of directness and emancipation, is tethered to the limitations of the stage, and it becomes secondary whether Sircar had actually used elevated platforms, or came down to the level of the spectators. By virtue of the concept expressed through the terminologies, the performance space was predestined to be associated and synonymous with the mancha. In defining freedom of the Third Theatre, Sircar tacitly accepted the ‘confinement’ of the stage. What Honzl said about the concept of the stage encapsulates Sircar’s anganmancha and muktamancha:

We may say that the stage can be represented by any real space or, in other words, a stage can equally well be a structure or a town square surrounded by spectators or a meadow or a hall in an inn. But even when a stage is such a space, it need not be denoted solely by its spatial nature.128

According to Sircar, for anganmancha and muktamancha, they had the difficult task of ‘mastering’ two types of writing, producing, and acting.129 If reaching out to the people was his objective, what was the need for anganmancha, which is a close relation of intimate theatre? If muktamancha could express his ideas well, why did he have to vacillate between the two forms? Sircar has an explanation for this: His theatre can now serve two purposes, can move in two different directions, first, an intimate theatre where an intense emotional communication is possible, and second, a theatre which can go to where the people are without waiting for them to come to a specified place.… Although the philosophies of the two kinds of the new theatre are the same, the respective languages differ considerably. The environment of the intimate theatre obtained by the arrangements of seats, the individual approach made possible by the proximity of the spectators, the intensity of communication, the subtlety of projection—all these are not to be had in an open air performance in a village or a park where sometimes thousands of people gather.130

When Sircar talks about ‘intense emotional communication’ in intimate theatre, he clearly suggests in aesthetic terms: ‘intensity of communication’ and ‘subtlety of projection’ following in the footsteps of his Western predecessors and peers. Through intimacy, he wanted to be ‘subtle’, a necessary instrument for any piece of artistic production (this may remind of mehfils in north-Indian music131—bearing the mark of monarchy and feudalism—and baithaki132 literature—which flourished during the colonial period, and is reminiscent of bhadralok, babu culture. It can be said broadly, with licence and liberty, that Sircar’s anganmancha is like mehfil- or baithaki-theatre). On the other hand, if intimate theatre is endowed with ‘intensity’, open-air performances, which Sircar also admitted, are sure to lose that, and would not be able to communicate desirably; their purpose would fall short. (He talks about reaching out to the audience in their places. This statement would be vindicated if we remember Satabdi’s city performances or village tours.) This kind of dual representation, as professed by Sircar, is perhaps a manifestation of the dichotomy between the formation of Sircar as a theatre worker and his form of theatre. He could not dispel what

he had seen in Europe or the USA, that is why he could not let go the very idea of an elitist intimate theatre like Grotowski’s and others’,133 where artistic approach is of vital importance. Sircar admitted, ‘I was not good at writing and producing plays in the open. I felt myself more at home in the intimate theatre situation of Anganmancha, and felt that there was a lot still to be explored in that area…. Artistically I find more satisfaction in the Anganmancha productions.’134 At the same time, the social conditions would conjure up his past, or vice versa. Ultimately, it would be impossible for him to forget his own surroundings, his ‘people’. ‘To think of readers while writing is a great fault in me,’ he wrote once,135 certainly keeping the literate audience in mind, which drew the line between urbanity and rusticity. ‘To have any hope of changing its audience a performance must somehow connect with that audience’s ideology or ideologies’136 through a comprehensible medium. Sircar did just this for his bhadralok city folk.

Seven THINGS FALL APART

Comrades-in-arms. (From L to R) Badal Sircar, Samad, Ratna Ghosal, Bisakha Ray, and Chhaya Mandal during a rehearsal of Satabdi, n.d. Source: A former theatre worker.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.1

What was once a charismatic new direction in Indian theatre has now been reduced to dull repetition of old habits. Sircar’s demise has made the situation worse, though even he could not help the Third Theatre to evolve in his last years. Its downfall started almost two decades ago. Perhaps the reasons were hidden in its heyday, when things were being run ‘ideologically’. My research entailed that I should, in all fairness, find out some of the other ‘lost voices’ of the Third Theatre. The typical narrative when we talk about the Third Theatre presents only Badal Sircar as the iconic figure, whereas it should name other members of Satabdi and other groups, too. Sircar also expressed the same idea in The Third Theatre, which has been cited in Chapter Four: ‘We were preparing a base whereby the next play may not be written by Badal Sircar or any other playwright, but created by “Satabdi”— the entire group.’ This democratic approach, with ideals of equal participation, seems encouraging but suffers from lack of practical evidence. Historically, Satabdi was founded by Sircar, and its members being influenced by him came under its aegis; several other groups were formed, but Sircar and his Satabdi remained the most prominent locally, nationally, and internationally. Without these other groups’ collective participation, the Third Theatre would not have reached the pinnacle; still their fate seems to have been sealed. In my interviews, Manas Das of Ayna and Sumit Kumar Biswas of Pathasena agreed that Sircar’s association with Satabdi made it the leading institution of the Third Theatre, and they (Ayna and Pathasena) had to struggle to reach where they were then. Nevertheless, they managed to secure a relatively stable position, also coming up with their own plays.2 Satabdi’s destiny might have been the same had Sircar not been closely associated with it. The plays

written by him for the Third Theatre were chiefly produced by Satabdi because of this association. Meanwhile, other members of Satabdi remained absent, except occasional appearances of a few in Angan and in the writings on the Third Theatre. For the sake of argument, let us assume that the group was organized on equal rights, that there was complete absence of individual name and that prominence was given only to the identity of the group, Satabdi. In that case, Sircar’s name should also have been erased, like those of his fellow workers, but in reality just the opposite happened. Sircar became the playwrightdirector of Satabdi, and Satabdi became the leading institution of the Third Theatre. We know that an institution cannot be operated by a single person, that a group means an association of individuals, and that very often in the capitalist system the owner(s) even profit from such groups. Ideologically, Sircar’s initiative was against such a capitalist, profit-making structure. Why, then, were his comrades-in-arms forgotten? In Voyages in the Theatre, we come across a few examples of deletion: 1. A member of Satabdi directed it [Sada Kalo]….3 2. Two other productions of Satabdi …were made by the directors themselves on the basis of two short stories. I consider these productions to be significant voyages for our group … burdened by an old man who happens to write and direct plays, … other colleague groups … are doing that all the time.4

In the first example, Sircar omitted the actual identity of the director of Sada Kalo from the play-making process.5 In the second example, again, Sircar avoids naming the plays and their directors, and takes recourse to magnanimity: (i) ‘I consider these production to be significant voyages for our group’, (ii) ‘burdened by an old man’, and (iii) ‘I have been talking about the voyages…that we have undertaken collectively, and that is why I generally used the term “we”.’6 Generally, Sircar did not allow us to know the identity of the ‘we’. If ‘other colleague groups’ had been writing and producing plays ‘all the time’, what stopped the members of Satabdi from pursuing a similar path? Why were their activities in these areas confined to infinitesimal presentations? These disturbing questions prompt us to investigate the actor–director relationship with regard to the play-making process. After the setback of the Naxalbari movement, some young, vibrant revolutionaries came into contact with Sircar in the early 1970s. The middle-

aged Sircar, established in the theatre fraternity by then, observed a new enthusiasm in their eyes. However, according to Ratna Ghosal, Sircar was not influenced by the two or three members in the group with ultra-Left ideologies, but reacted to the Naxalite movement with his own ideas and experience of that turbulent period, never portraying bloodshed and killings in his plays.7 In the light of a new politico-theatrical consciousness, Sircar started a journey towards a new goal8 with teammates like Bisakha Ray, Ratna Ghosal, Sandip Saha, Tapan Banerjee, and Arijit Roy, among others. In due course of time, Bisakha Ray and Sircar fell in love and got married on 10 December 1979.9 In my interview, Ray narrated, like a diligent, loyal (though former) ‘soldier’, the nature of the actor–director relationship, and the equal status and liberty enjoyed by both. From 1971, when she first got acquainted with Sircar, to 1990 (the year of their separation), ‘almost everything’ was perfect both at the personal level and in the performing space.10 From her initial accounts it would be difficult to sense that anything went wrong during this period. But if everything was normal, until the separation, what led to the obliteration of her name from the history of the Third Theatre? Barring a few instances in Angan, she does not exist even in Sircar’s personal accounts, in the autobiography. But that cannot wipe out her remarkable contributions to Sircar’s Third Theatre and to many of his plays, let alone the personal interactions, which helped Sircar write unremittingly for almost two decades. She exemplified this with her explanation of Gandi and Michhil: Badal told me many a time if I were not there, he wouldn’t have done a play like Gandi. Because, Soma [a character in the play] was required. Gandi doesn’t work without Grusha. Then, a powerful actor like that is required. It was between Badal and me. These are personal conversations. … Badal got to know Khoka through me. I met Badal when he was 46. He was not a socalled political worker, whereas I was thrown from the hot karahi of politics. That, naturally, again and again … otherwise why do Khoka and the Old Man appear again and again? Two generations appear.11

The characters of Khoka and the Old Man in this play represent two generations: the generation of Ray and that of Sircar, respectively. It was a manifestation of mutuality between a middle-aged man and a woman 23 years younger. With Sircar’s own views were assimilated the ideas, aspirations, dream, and despair of Ray and her generation. Khoka is an

embodiment of Ray and her generation, and the Old Man is the representative of a bygone era. Michhil was their point of convergence, the beginning of their mutual journey, uncertain though.12 Nearly everyone I interviewed agreed with her suggestion of the influence of a new, energetic generation on Sircar’s creativity. This generation helped his Third Theatre ‘politicize’ more than he did the same for them because of his lack of commitment to political activities;13 he never belonged to serious politics, according to Ray.14 Drawing references from Sircar’s autobiography, Samik Bandyopadhyay showed that this lack of commitment was also evident in his theatrical endeavours.15 His previously amateurish approach gradually started taking a different shape only after Ebong Indrajit, culminating in Baki Itihas, Pare Konodin, and Tringsa Satabdi (in the proscenium phase). With his departure from that stage to another, and the association with a new batch of youth, there came plays like Spartacus, Prastab, Bhoma, Hattamalar Opare, Basi Khabar, and others. Therefore, the question remains about Sircar’s progress without the contribution of his fellow workers who followed in his footsteps like loyal comrades despite bereavement16 and professional obligations.17 There was no money, no publicity, not even a flickering ray of hope for any sort of personal gain, yet the members acted together in a nucleus, ignoring their personal problems, some of them for nearly two decades. Without the significant contribution of Ray, we could not have appreciated Bhoma as we do now—a fact corroborated by my other interviewees. In the same interview, Bisakha Ray said, ‘If Bhoma is a 60-page play, I wrote ten pages.… “Bhoma’s red blood blooms into white jasmine on our rice plates….”—I wrote this line. If Badal didn’t admit that, researchers like you would see.’ Sircar’s admission in 1992 at the Shri Ram Memorial Lectures was as follows: ‘It was decided that everybody would henceforth write down the facts or phenomena he or she reacts to together with the reactions. Such a notebook we called the “book of feelings”. The group began to deal with the scenes I wrote, and with the contributions they made, and the play Bhoma gradually emerged.’18 This generous admission of the collective contribution in the ‘book of feelings’ is tragically insufficient for the quantitative and qualitative analyses of collective contribution, where the contribution of the each individual

member (culminated in collective participation) was held back and the ‘author’ Sircar emerged with Bhoma in ‘I wrote’. Ray, again in the same interview, claimed that the inclusion of the perspective of the Santhal movement in Basi Khabar that changed the dimension of the play was the result of a disagreement between Sircar and her on the scope and possibility of the play. Her colleagues informed me about the change in the script as well, and their subsequent contribution to its regeneration was also supported by Ray, whereas the narrative in the Voyages in the Theatre is highly doctored: if the human struggle was to be portrayed as the central issue, Sircar pointed out, the question emerged whether to show revolution in general terms, or to depict a particular rebellion. After discussion(s), they concluded to remain focused on a particular revolution. ‘Somebody suggested the Santhal revolt in the 19th century, and the suggestion was accepted.’19 Sircar mentioned the importance of workshop, discussion, even revival of the ‘books of feelings’,20 but made Bisakha Ray ‘somebody’, and, interestingly, himself assumed the role of ‘not the author of the play, but at best the editor’.21 The portrayal of self-deprecation tantamount to the self-assessment of his role as the editor of the play against the unknown (‘other’) contributors where ‘somebody’ was absorbed does not devalue Sircar’s authorship. Eventually, as we all know, Sircar’s name is etched permanently as the father of Basi Khabar, like the other plays of the Third Theatre. Referring to Sircar’s experience of the rehearsal of The Money Tower by Beck and Malina’s Living Theatre, Samik Bandyopadhyay divulged that Sircar was inspired by the concept of collective creation, and followed the same in the writing process of Basi Khabar, incorporating the members’ inputs.22 However, the detailed facts and incidents never found much of a place in the history of the Third Theatre, though without them the history would not have been created. In his writings, Sircar laid stress broadly on group discussions and workshops in order to sketch the democratic, humane conditions of collective participation and creation in Satabdi. My interviewees candidly confirmed these claims, hailed Sircar as a leader extraordinaire, and stressed the excellent actor–director relationship. They acknowledged Sircar’s sincerity and sensitivity that helped the members of Satabdi come together, otherwise, in Ray’s opinion, plays like Bhoma, Michhil, Basi Khabar, Manushe

Manushe, or Bhanga Manush would not have been possible.23 Notwithstanding the fact that Sircar allowed the members to discuss their roles, the evolution of a play, etc., he wielded enormous influence to a degree of authoritarianism, which perhaps can be described as ‘benign dictatorship’,24 if the words of Biswas are taken into consideration. He wants to see Sircar’s authorship as the expression of respect and reverence on behalf of all members of Satabdi.25 Lyubimov, who had also inspired Sircar, did not have qualms about confessing: ‘It would be naïve … to think that [the director and actor] occupy the same place in the creative process, [although] I do not make a distinction of hierarchy.’26 John Freedman suggested that Lyubimov was authoritarian because he believed that a director has to be an expert in almost all the departments of theatre.27 Perhaps Sircar was no different in this context: ‘[H]e counts on the loyalty of a group of young individuals—who respect him, adore him, are committed to him. Committed to him more than to any theatre, any ideology, any politics.’28 From Derrida’s approach that the stage becomes a theological site because an ‘author-creator’ being absent and empowered with a text keeps an eye on, assimilates and regulates the time and meaning of the representation and thus allows the ‘latter [to] represent him as concerns what is called the content of his thoughts, his intentions, his ideas’,29 Philip Auslander came to the somewhat curious conclusion that ‘if the theatre could do away with the playwright, it would cease to be theological.… [T]he theatre remains theological as long as it is logocentric, and the logos of the performance need not take the form of a playwright’s or creator’s text.’30 I think it is not the ‘author-creator’ who should be subjected to such a criticism of being the theological guru; the responsibility of putting on a play (or for organizing the theatrical sign-system) always lies with the director,31 and if the director and writer of the text is the same person, such analysis can still be accepted with due caution. Although what Derrida commented about the stage does not have a direct bearing on the traditions that directors like Sircar followed, his attitude towards his own texts, the actors, and rehearsal processes would compel one to think in terms of a ‘theological’ institution or guru-ism. Indeed, one could even argue that when the dramatist and the director are the same person, the authority figure and, therefore, authoritarianism actually becomes redoubled. According to Sircar and the former members I interviewed, the scripts

were definitely written by Sircar, but at the time of workshops, and through discussion, they were subjected to collective scrutiny and subsequent modifications, whenever necessary. During rehearsals, Sircar, without imposing,32 allowed space to the actors for improvisation and encouraged application of individual thought and liberty to express emotions in their acting that enriched the Third Theatre as a form.33 He never instructed them how to act or throw dialogue, which the performers learnt gradually through workshops.34 In view of these facts, we understand that the qualitative enhancement was a process of the Third Theatre where everyone had an important share and it was not anyone’s personal property. My proposition is simple: if the above accounts are true, as they seem to be, why should the texts bear the name of Sircar only? Why are the members of Satabdi lost in oblivion?35 The answer, perhaps, lies in Sircari guru-ism. Arijit Roy gave an interesting piece of information in this regard. Whether Sircar’s name should be mentioned in the advertising leaflets was debated in the group at one point of time. Though Sircar took a negative stand, gradually, his name was used with an idea of procuring bigger spaces, which Roy criticized as a compromise with commercialization and capitalism.36 Samik Bandyopadhyay also hinted at the same aspects, positing Sircar’s theatre thinking on the same plane as that of other group theatre leaders of Calcutta. He said that though Sircar showed a way of social change through theatre, which could not have been achieved through proscenium discourse, eventually his theatre fell into the ‘trap’ of the idea of group theatres, which was based on the actor-manager model. Behind the ‘we’ stood the colossal, institutional, and iconic stature of Sircar: ‘It was Badal Sircar’s theatre—that was accepted by Sircar as well as Satabdi. If he could not impart alternative ideas, the group members would also think likewise.’37 In her interview with me, Ratna Ghosal recalled how Sircar was approached by the media for interviews and their eagerness to talk only to the director did not change here. The other members of the group were lost under the repetitive ‘I’s in those interviews, ‘crushed under the great I equals Badal Sircar’. In the proscenium theatre, she pointed out ironically, at least everyone is given due credit, which was missing in Satabdi. ‘A friend of mine drew my attention to these facts first, but we used to consider ourselves as the soldiers of revolution.’ Affirmation of her words is found in Bandyopadhyay’s comments. In his interactions with the former Naxalites

who had joined the Third Theatre, he felt their angst. In his opinion, they too were pained that Sircar had become a cult figure, a national celebrity, an award winner. Eventually, they left in frustration.38 Though ‘stardom’ was relinquished, Sircar became the only star of the movement. In the history of world theatre, there might have been plenty of similar examples. If they are not accused of breach of intellectual property rights or unethical practices, why should Sircar be singled out for criticism? Simply because Sircar prided himself in having left institutionalized politics because of his own integrity and commitment, and because he espoused egalitarianism as his theatre’s social message. Having accepted Sircar’s vision, Bandyopadhyay raised a few questions about his theatrical commitment. About the use of the body as weapon in theatre, Bandyopadhyay observed that Sircar did not incorporate any proper training except for a few ideas and some overseas exposure. A thorough praxis, which was never pursued, could have made the Third Theatre more valid and potent, Bandyopadhyay lamented. In subsequent practitioners he did not notice such an attempt either,39 a harsh reality rued by the former members of Satabdi whom I interacted with. The problem of commitment and engagement, or what we may regard positively as individualistic restlessness, was a characteristic of Sircar that, it may be argued, spanned his personal life and continued in his political activities40 and theatrical career. Bandyopadhyay pointed out Sircar’s unwillingness, which I have also mentioned in Chapter Four, to record the development of the Third Theatre in his autobiography. The most important chapter is left with only some sketchy stories; as a sincere ‘worker’ of the Third Theatre, he should have done just the opposite for the sake of awareness as well as propagation of the ‘movement’. Bandyopadhyay admits that he could not understand such lack of commitment at its peak, but after more than four decades, he now perceives it differently because he is able to watch from a distance, which has made him more objective and critical.41 Ray found ‘a well calculated scheme’ in the erasure of the post-1970 chronicle from his autobiography. She thinks that it was necessary to wipe out the details, documents, names, and existence of his early co-workers, who would have had to be credited with the collective growth of the Third Theatre. That is why his autobiography did not go further after 1970: ‘There is a politics there.’42 This ‘politics’ of exclusion was embedded in the

characteristics of the Third Theatre, and the fourth volume of Sircar’s autobiography is just the final manifestation. My interviewees, after a little probing, divulged their anguish and frustration at being deprived and driven out from the group.43 As in other group theatres of Calcutta, the members of Satabdi, Ghosal pointed out, were made to realize the importance of their group. She believes that there was a design for inculcating implicitly a belief in their worth, radicalism, and commitment as members, during their stay in the group. In order to attract people, retain them in the group, and keep it running, a kind of revolutionary halo was created around Satabdi, and the idea was spread, though indirectly, that there would not be any ‘revolution’ without Satabdi. It was not admitted that there were other places or spaces that could create social changes. That was why, Sircar did not take any further interest in those who left Satabdi. ‘From these aspects he was a very one-eyed person. But these things happen elsewhere, too.’44 It may seem interesting that the group, which had been so dear to Sircar for more than two decades, was dissolved for what now seems petty egotism. In 1990, after Ray’s separation from him, she left Satabdi and moved to Puducherry for nearly five years in search of peace and consolation. Within the next three years, other important members either left Satabdi out of dissatisfaction or were expelled. The idea of equality was vanishing fast from Satabdi; the old ‘comrades’ were replaced by a new generation. A few of them were old members of Satabdi and belonged to other groups as well. They took the place of Sircar’s confidantes and counsellors, which did not benefit either Sircar or Satabdi much. In fact, after 1993 (Ka Cha Ta Ta Pa), only a few plays, most of which are not so important, came out from Sircar’s pen, and on the performing space, too, no remarkable contribution was made. Of course, it has to be admitted that Sircar was no longer young and did not have the energy of his earlier years. Regarding her dismissal, Ghosal has a miserable memory. We do not know Sircar’s version of these events. After Sircar’s suicide attempt in 1990 —an indication of his fragile state of mind then—when she visited the nursing home where he was admitted and enquired about the whereabouts of Ray, the other members of Satabdi looked askance at her (she was unaware of the breakdown in the relationship between Sircar and Ray). A few days later, after the publication of a report by Ghosal in a leading Bengali daily, the members of Satabdi openly challenged her honesty and commitment to

the group and its ideology. In her perception, they suspected that through articles and newspaper publications she was siding with Ray, who had already separated from Sircar. After a heated discussion with some of the members at Sircar’s residence, where he was present upstairs at the time of the event, Ghosal came out in tears. Later, she went to meet Sircar and ask about her faults. He admitted the misunderstanding of his group members, but never asked her to return to Satabdi. ‘Actually, their target was to erase Bisakha Ray and those associated with Bisakha,’ she concluded.45 Sandip Saha reluctantly narrated the story of the disintegration of Satabdi. Nobody narrated it so thoroughly as Saha, though some former members hinted at the event. The present leader of Satabdi, Kalyan Ghosh, also alluded to it, but subtly avoided revealing anything,46 and also turned down my request to interview other present members of Satabdi. However, it was August 1993; Sircar was not present in Calcutta. Different groups had been performing at Surendranath Park as before. One day, an old group performed with the banner of an ultra-Left political party hung at the back of the performing area. Sandip Saha said that it was first noticed by Dipankar Datta, but he (Saha) suggested that Datta ignore the matter. Afterwards, four or five members of their group, along with Datta, discussed the issue and enquired about the justification for ignoring it. On reaching a resolution, they forbade the other group to repeat the action. When Sircar heard about the incident on arrival, he too suggested the same remedy. He thought that a play was enough to put forth one’s ideas; the political stamp was unnecessary. Saha opined that Sircar was very careful all through his theatrical career not to get identified with any political party. The possibility that on a particular day groups, including Satabdi, could have shared space with that controversial group without subscribing to their political ideology led the members (Prabir Naskar, Parag Maitra, Tapan Banerjee, Ashu Mukhopadhyay, Partha Sengupta, and, later, Saha) to decide to do away with the political banner from the performing area. Much before the breaking out of this strife, the members of Satabdi, including Sircar, had taken a decision not to perform under any political banner. But somewhere down the line, things changed—according to Saha, there were members in the group who had started thinking of politicizing performances and persuaded Sircar in that direction. Amidst intense, conflicting debate, another group called Satak was formed by Sircar (27 March 1993) within Satabdi. Saha is of the opinion that the preparation for

the formation of Satak got under way as soon as the conflict surfaced, in consultation with the members close to Sircar. His refusal to allow the room of his house for Satabdi’s rehearsals, and the announcement of the formation of Satak, came like a bolt from the blue to those six members, including Saha, who had been left out from the whole process. Saha recounted: We did not leave Satabdi even then, though Satabdi’s door was closed. Who went to Satak and how they went are not known to me. Badal-da invited me to join Satak, but I did not. There certainly was politics in it. Before my transfer to Orissa, the six of us continued to perform as Samabeta Prayas with Ritam and Angan Theatre Group throughout 1994–5.47

In solidarity with the other five members, Saha stayed away from Satak. Some time later,48 Sircar invited all Third Theatre groups to his residence and announced the formal revival of Satabdi because he claimed that it was he who had coined the name and created the group. Some of the attendees wanted to question the reasonability of the decision, but were either ignored or silenced.49 Saha thinks that the decision to revive Satabdi had been made before that meeting, which was a mere formality.50 The towering figure of Sircar, who by this time had become an institution, became an impediment to those who had collectively been the driving force of Satabdi.51 The very companions without whom the ‘movement’ would never have taken off were replaced by new successors; the few who had walked shoulder to shoulder with Sircar in pursuit of their common dream of a new cultural paradigm lost their places to Sircar’s new confidantes. Ray thinks that a particular type of work was done when she was present in Satabdi and after that another type came into being, suggesting a fall in the standards since 1990.52 In her evaluation of Sircar’s activities in this period, Ray said that he might have compromised ethics and sincerity: ‘This is an individual failure.’53 In a conversation with her in 2004–5, Sircar expressed his displeasure at the delayed publication of his plays, while other writers were given priority. She replied to him saying, ‘There is no point in your comment. It isn’t done that you would do anti-establishment theatre and expect a first call.’ According to Ray, after this, though Sircar said disapprovingly that he could not understand what she had been saying, he ‘was not in a position to argue’ with her, nor did he ‘have that strength’: that is how she assesses the discussion.54 Incidentally, in the interview with me on a similar issue, he had

mocked the non-saleability, therefore unavailability, of publishers for his plays.55 After hearing about this side of Satabdi’s activities, I understood why Sircar seemed to become aggravated when I had asked him about the former members of Satabdi. My inquisitiveness could have dug up an unpleasant history, which of course he did not want to be revealed. Again (following the events discussed in Chapter One), we are face to face with another history of exclusion: ‘Everything came very politely. In past 20 years, perhaps at times, I could feel this polite authoritarianism.’56 Saha’s words remind us of the following history of Theatre Workshop, which inspired Sircar in conceptualizing anganmancha: Theatre Workshop remained nominally a democracy, but in practice democracy was diminishing. According to Clive Barker: ‘The contradictions culminated in a company meeting which voted to remove Gerry Raffles as Manager. This was never acted on, and at that point certain things became clear: Joan led the company but Gerry held the power.’ Perhaps this was inevitable as some actors became interested in working in other theatres, and new actors replaced them. The earlier political fire burned lower, though plenty of the old sense of artistic mission remained.57

Saha is not worried about these things any more. Only stoicism persists in his voice. He said to me: What can I say here? If someone does not acknowledge … in his personal life also … saw in front of our eyes … he obliterated his wife completely … what can I say? Everything happened in front of my eyes … these things cannot be assumed from the beginning; with the journey many things are revealed. I don’t know who is where now … it’s already late … this interview should have been done in Badal-da’s lifetime so that you might have taken this to him and asked, ‘Please listen what Sandip is saying, now you say’; it might have helped you then.58

The nature and quality of these allegations undoubtedly require a response from the person in question. But after my maiden interview with Sircar in 2004, despite trying a number of times to have further dialogue with him, on every occasion he denied me any such meeting. Nevertheless, Sircar may be tried in absentia in a number of ways, but because of the lack of rejoinders or counter statements, the benefit of the doubt has to be given in his favour.

The survival of human beings is dependent on money. A large section of the population in countries like India does not even possess the sum of money that could earn them a square meal a day. For them, words like ‘competition’ or ‘free market’ are absurd, a defamatory joke; success, achievement, rivalry, and improvement are matters of the faraway world governed by the system of selling and buying. Sircar, via some of the most influential Western theatre thinkers, shows us a way of producing plays in such a competitive world at minimal cost, maintaining closeness between the audience and the actor to a certain degree. In an age of success, fame, money, and power, it was indeed a difficult journey, which the Third Theatre may be said to have achieved in Sircar’s lifetime. This form of theatre shows us that a dream of the impossible can be achieved, even if we were to argue, partially and sparsely. In the ultimate analysis, we must also remember that the edifice which Sircar and Satabdi’s first members built was occupied eventually by a new set of members who neither possessed the experience of the Third Theatre’s inception and its evolution nor the vision. Their work was reduced to following in the footsteps of an institutionalized Sircar; hence, the (conceptual) attachment also weakened. With only a few exceptions, longstanding relationship with Satabdi became a rarity: participants came and left. With time, this trend became more prominent and a problem to the group. At present, the repetition of old productions has become imperative because of the absence of sufficient qualified members. It is easier to present a show of an old play with new members, if someone joins at all.59 With repetitiveness is attached the absence of new plays (Pathasena and Ayna produce their own plays, some of which are new and some old, including Sircar’s). What Sircar had written some 30 or 40 years ago is still being produced; despite their relevance to today’s context, the necessity of new texts cannot be overlooked if this form of theatre is to continue. Moreover, Sircar’s plays also have to evolve with changing times. For example, the violence in Khat Mat Kring, and the text itself, one of his most recent, is very simplistic. The connection between daily violence, state violence, and imperialist violence is even more complex now. These aspects should have been reworked, which never happened. Sircar did not prepare the ground nor did the members train themselves for the future.60 Satabdi and the Third Theatre have fallen into monotony and stasis, whereas their history was vibrant with agility, and, of course, a degree of innovation and a kind of political philosophy. Once a living form, the Third Theatre seems destined to

be archived historically and treasured nostalgically.

NOTES AND REFERENCES Acknowledgements 1. ‘I despise Ram and his rabble; but the idea of Ravan elevates and kindles my imagination; he was a grand fellow.’ Quoted by Khetra Gupta in his chapter, ‘Madhusudan Datta: Jiban-Katha’ (Madhusudan Datta: A Biography). See Michael Madhusudan Datta, Madhusudan Rachanabali, ed. Khetra Gupta (Calcutta: Sahitya Sansad, 1996), p. xxxv.

On Translation, Transliteration, and Use of Some Words 1. Sumanta Banerjee, Dangerous Outcasts: The Prostitute in Nineteenth Century Bengal (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1998), p. vi. 2. Banerjee, Dangerous Outcasts, p. vii. He quoted this comment made by three ‘sex workers’ of the Calcutta red-light area.

Introduction 1. Sircar said this in an interview with me in December 2004. Abridged versions of this interview were published in Anandabazar Patrika’s Patrika as ‘Itihas Ghure Phire Ashe’, 13 August 2005, p. 2, and Sephis e-Magazine as ‘Third Theatre in Bengal: An Interview with Badal Sircar’, 2 January 2006, pp. 4–6. 2. Badal Sircar, ‘Paramanabik Astrer Bibhishika: Panchasher Dashak Thekei Bhebechi’, Angan (August 1998), pp. 20–1. 3. Roland Barthes in Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), p. 145. 4. Though Brecht’s Marxist leanings, sharp political irony, sense of humour, and profound humanism could be seen in Sircar in a very limited form. 5. Barthes, Image-Music-Text, p. 147. 6. Barthes, Image-Music-Text, p. 147. 7. Sumanta Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, Theatre India, no. 2 (November 1999), pp. 117–18. 8. Madeeha Gauhar, ‘Crossing Frontiers: Shared Concerns in Alternative Theatre’, India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 24, nos 2/3 (Monsoon 1997), pp. 251–2. 9. Rahul Varma, ‘Teesri Duniya Theatre: Diversifying Diversity with Relevant Works of Theatre’, South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 7, no. 3 (2009), p. 180.

10. Carol C. Davis, ‘Decade of Dreams: Democracy and the Birth of Nepal’s Engaged Stage, 1980–1990’, Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 26, no. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 96–7. 11. Davis, ‘Decade of Dreams’, p. 98. 12. Davis, ‘Decade of Dreams’, p. 98. 13. Davis, ‘Decade of Dreams’, p. 98. 14. Davis, ‘Decade of Dreams’, p. 102. 15. Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, p. 117. 16. Badal Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre: Shri Ram Memorial Lectures 1992 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), p. 37. 17. Badal Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 1983), pp. 10–19. 18. Jo Trowsdale, ‘Sitting in Badal’s Circle: Artist and Pedagogue—The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, vol. 2, no. 1 (1997), p. 54, emphasis mine. 19. Sircar’s statement quoted in ‘The Third Theater of Badal Sircar’; see Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theater of Bengal (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1983), p. 129. 20. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 129. 21. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 175. 22. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 176. 23. Sircar’s statement quoted in Bill McDonnell, ‘Towards a Theatre of “Little Changes”: A Dialogue about Dialogue’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, vol. 10, no. 1 (2005), p. 73. 24. Quoted in Adakkaravayalil Yoyakky Eldhose, ‘Political Conscientisation through Street Theatre: A Study with Reference to Kalyanasaugadhikam’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, vol. 19, no. 4 (2014), p. 344. 25. My interview with Samik Bandyopadhyay on 11 January 2012. 26. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 12. 27. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 13. 28. Ananya Chatterjea (‘In Search of the Choreographies of Daily Life and Struggle’, South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 8, no. 1 [2010], p. 9) says: Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT) is a dance company of women artists of color who are diverse in race, age, nationality, sexuality, but uniformly committed to the intersection of social justice and artistic excellence. Our mission is to create and stage original dance works and powerful images inspired by the lives and work of women all around the world, and to create different ways to understand and honor their struggles and resistance. 29. Chatterjea, ‘In Search of the Choreographies of Daily Life and Struggle’, p. 10. 30. Meenakshi Mukherjee, ‘Divided by a Common Language’, Indian Literature, vol. 48, no. 4 (July–August 2004), p. 68.

31. Rajinder Paul, ‘Whatever Happened to Modern Indian Theatre?’, India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1991), p. 81. 32. Shweta Kishore, ‘The Political in Indian Documentary Film: Material and Aesthetic Interventions, Post-economic Liberalization’, Studies in Documentary Film, vol. 7, no. 2 (2013), p. 130. 33. P. Kerim Friedman, ‘From Thugs to Victims: Dakxin Bajrange Chhara’s Cinema of Justice’, Visual Anthropology, vol. 24, no. 4 (2011), p. 377. 34. K. Raha translated Sircar’s Marital, which was published in Enact, vol. 44, no. 45 (August–September 1970). In the introduction to this one-page play, he described it as a ‘mini play’. I was unable to locate the Bengali script of this play. 35. Kathryn Hansen, Grounds for Play: The Nautanki Theatre of North India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 42–3. 36. See ‘Interview with Michel Foucault’, in Michel Foucault, Essential Works of Foucault (1954–1984), ed. James D. Faubion, trans Robert Hurley and others (London: Penguin Books, 2002 [vol. 3]), p. 242. 37. Foucault, Essential Works of Foucault, p. 240.

Chapter 1 Bengali Theatre: An Edifice for the Bhadraloks 1. Jibanananda Das, ‘Song of Leisure’, in Naked Lonely Hand, trans. Joe Winter (Calcutta: Meteor Books, 2004), p. 39. Original title in Bengali is ‘Abasarer Gan’ in Dhusar Pandulipi. 2. Sunitikumar Chattopadhyay, in his Preface, has commented, ‘In the history of Bengali drama we have seen very few books of high quality; I think Bengali literature did not benefit as much from the plays as it did from poetry and novels’ (see Ajit Kumar Ghosh, Bangla Nataker Itihas [Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, 2014], p. v, translation mine). However, it can be argued that Chattopadhyay represents the old generation of pundits who expected high literary sophistication from drama, treating it as literature foremost, rather than theatre. In theatre historian Asutosh Bhattacharya’s opinion, Bengali sentimentalism and romanticism are two key obstructive factors in the plays. Besides, different aspects of economic crises were also missing (see his Bangla Natyasahityer Itihas: 1852–1952 [Calcutta: A. Mukherji and Co. Ltd, 1955], pp. 11, 15). That is why many critics have pointed out reasonably that the need for plays was met with typical mythological and historical themes. For the absence of economic issues in their plays, the playwrights only cannot be blamed; the social and political situations of Bengal were also not favourable during the colonial period. 3. Dario Fo (in Richard Drain (ed.), Twentieth Century Theatre: A Sourcebook [London and New York: Routledge, 1995], p. 204) says: We should begin by studying peasant culture and its relevance to us: to deny it is to perpetuate Croce’s attitude, which relegates it to ‘folklore’. It’s also a mistake to deny it

because capitalism has taken advantage of it and made it commercial: what goes unnoticed is that the bourgeoisie has ‘picked up’ only its surface aspects. Without plumbing the depths of this culture, or even when it does, it talks about an archaic peasant ‘pre-culture’, a mythical culture of the people’s religious spirit, seen as an object of archaeological research. 4. Bhattacharya, Bangla Natyasahityer Itihas, p. 3. 5. Bhattacharya, Bangla Natyasahityer Itihas, p. 39. 6. Quoted in Brajendranath Banerjee, Bengali Stage: 1795–1873 (Calcutta: Ranjan Publishing House, 1943), p. 7. This paragraph was translated from the original Bengali text in Samachar Chandrika, published in The Asiatic Journal in August 1826. 7. ‘Natakabhinay’, Nabaprabandha (August 1867), p. 100, translation mine. 8. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Rachanabali, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1954 [vol. 2]), p. 237. 9. Quoted in Bhattacharya, Bangla Natyasahityer Itihas, p. 49, translation mine, bold emphasis mine. 10. Sukumar Sen, Bangala Sahityer Itihas (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1994 [vol. 3]), p. 105. Sen thinks that the writer must have been a Vedic Brahman; that is why he did not reveal his name for fear of society. 11. Sen, Bangala Sahityer Itihas, p. 142. 12. Himani Bannerji, The Mirror of Class: Essays on Bengali Theatre (Calcutta: Papyrus, 1998), p. 190. Utpal Dutt was fascinated by the idea that ‘Girish’s thoughts developed around his own “vulgar”/“low-bred” audience, prostitute actresses, and his social marginalized co-actors. He is not only a “theatre-wallah,” but in the small yard of the complacent middle class he stood as a drunkard “jatra-wallah”.’ Quoted by Bannerji, The Mirror of Class, p. 193. 13. Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas: 1795–1876 (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, 1998), p. 19, translation mine. 14. Banerjee, Bengali Stage, pp. 6–7. Yatra is equivalent to Jatra. 15. Banerjee, Bengali Stage, p. 7. 16. Karl Marx in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Colonialism (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.), p. 84, available at https://archive.org/stream/oncolonialism00marxuoft#page/84/mode/2up, accessed on 9 June 2015. 17. Marx in Marx and Engels, On Colonialism, p. 84. 18. Marx in Marx and Engels, On Colonialism, p. 84. 19. Marx in Marx and Engels, On Colonialism, pp. 84–5. 20. Marx in Marx and Engels, On Colonialism, p. 84. 21. Darshan Chaudhuri, Bangla Theatre-er Itihas (Calcutta: Pustak Bipani, 1995), p. 4. 22. Bhudeb Chaudhuri, Bangla Sahityer Itikatha (Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, 1984 [vol.

2]), pp. 165–6. 23. Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, p. 17, translation mine. 24. Quoted by Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, pp. 17–18, translation mine. 25. Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, p. 19. 26. Gitabhinay was composed of songs derived from Krishna Jatra, dance from natun or new Jatra, and dialogues and dramatic conflict/tension from contemporary proscenium plays. See Chaudhuri, Bangla Theatre-er Itihas, p. 20. 27. Sen, Bangala Sahityer Itihas, pp. 143–4. 28. ‘Hitherto, the Gitabhinays which have been put on like opera are nothing but Jatra.’ See Maddhyastha, nos 5 and 6, part 4 (1875 [Bhadra and Ashwin 1282]), p. 117. 29. Quoted in Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, p. 81. 30. Quoted by Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, p. 80. 31. Sushil Kumar De (Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century: 1757–1857 [Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1962], p. 274) comments: The Kabi-poetry, however, has been subjected to an amount of harsh and even contemptuous criticism which it hardly ever deserved. The Reforming Young Bengal of the forties considered all forms of popular amusements—Kabi, Yatra or Paṃchali—to be contemptible. We shall see that had gradually come into Kabi-songs elements which were really contemptible; but what strikes one in the study of these popular forms of literature is that throughout the 19th century, with the exception of Isvar Gupta and a few isolated appreciators of things ancient, the so-called educated men of that century hardly ever cared to make a sympathetic study, much less to realise their literary or historical importance. Even to-day they do not seem to have received their due amount of attention or appreciation. But in spite of the apparent uncertainty of critical determination, the historical importance of these songs, apart from all question of artistic valuation, cannot surely be denied. The old Kabi-literature does not require an apologist to-day but it stands upon its own inherent claim to be treated in an historical survey of Bengali literature of this century. 32. Hemendra Nath Das Gupta writes, ‘When Calcutta and its adjacent places were full of erotic songs and sentiments of “Vidya Sundara”, East Bengal was then resounding with the sweet notes of Krishna Lila…. In Dacca there was no dearth of Jatra or Kavi.’ See The Indian Theatre (New Delhi: Gian Publishing House, 1988 [reprint]), p. 139. Maddhyastha noted that ‘Our Kaliyadaman, i.e., Krishnajatra is not an ordinary musical drama—what Paramananda, Govinda and Badan had done—… the way they had amused and made the audience weep, had set them adrift and caused to sink in different Rasas—will not happen again; the flawless musical drama of these songs can never achieve that….’ See Maddhyastha, nos 5 and 6, part 4 (1875 [Bhadra and Ashwin 1282]), p. 117. 33. ‘Natakabhinay’, Nabaprabandha, pp. 98–9, translation mine. 34. Quoted in Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, p. 83, translation mine. 35. ‘Bangalir Bhinna Bhinna Jati’, Amrita Bazar Patrika (12 March 1874), p. 34,

translation mine. 36. Clare Anderson, Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004), p. 74. 37. Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 10. 38. Horatio Smith, ‘Festivals, Games, and Amusements: Ancient and Modern’, Calcutta Review, vol. 15 (1851), pp. 348–9. 39. Chaudhuri, Bangla Theatre-er Itihas, p. 3, translation mine. 40. On 26 January 1873, a letter was published in the Indian Mirror stating: Sir,—Owing to a long existing ill-feeling among the members of the National Theatrical Society a disagreement has arisen amongst them. The cause of this faction, as the Secretary of the Society announces, is the failure on the part of the Treasurer to render the accounts. The other party ascribes the cause of this faction to some shortcoming on the part of the Secretary…. Believe me, yours truly BROJENDRA NATH BANERJEE. On 21 February 1873, another letter came out in the same newspaper stating: Sir,—Now the rupture among the members of the National Theatrical Society has, happily, come to a close. Selfishness, distrust, dictatorial tone and unwillingness to cringe are some of the causes which gave rise to it.… The three directors of the Theatre now are the Editor of the AMRITA BAZAR POTRICA, Babu G. C. Ghose, & another Native gentleman. A FRIEND TO THE NATIONAL THEATRE. See Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, pp. 122, 124. 41. Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, pp. 130–2. 42. Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, p. 162. 43. Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, pp. 179–80. 44. Amrita Bazar Patrika (20 February 1873), p. 14, translation mine. 45. Quoted in Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, p. 149. 46. ‘Samvadavali: “Kalikata o Bangadesh”’, Bharat Sanskarak (22 August 1873), p. 225, translation mine. 47. ‘Kalikatar Rangabhumi’, Amrita Bazar Patrika (15 January 1874), p. 391, translation mine. 48. Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, p. 150. 49. Quoted in Bandyopadhyay, Bangiya Natyasalar Itihas, p. 243, translation mine. 50. Amrita Bazar Patrika (27 February 1873). 51. ‘Saptaha’, Bharat Sanskarak (2 October 1874), p. 289. 52. Quoted in Das Gupta, The Indian Theatre, p. 137. 53. ‘Natyasala Smashanbidhi’, Bharat Sanskarak (3 March 1876), p. 425.

54. For a detailed discussion, see Manujendra Kundu, ‘The Dramatic Performances Act of 1876: Reactions of the Bengali Establishment to Its Introduction’, History and Sociology of South Asia, vol. 7, no. 1 (January 2013), pp. 79–93. 55. See ‘Natyasala Smashanbidhi’ and ‘Samvadavali’, in Bharat Sanskarak, pp. 425, 431. 56. Amrita Bazar Patrika (23 September 1873), p. 295. 57. Das Gupta, The Indian Theatre, p. 122. 58. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Kabi-Sangeet’, in Rabindra Rachanabali (Calcutta: VisvaBharati, 1940 [vol. 6]), p. 632. 59. Das Gupta, The Indian Theatre, p. 123. Khola, or khol, is an instrument of percussion, nupur is a set of anklets set with small bells which is worn by dancers, tobla is a tabla, the musical instrument, ghunghur is a string of larger bells worn around the ankle or the waist, and tappa is a traditional semi-classical vocal style of music in Bengal. 60. Das Gupta, The Indian Theatre, p. 87. 61. Dinesh Chandra Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature (Delhi: Gian Publishing House, 1986), pp. 617–21. 62. Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature, p. 620. 63. De, Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century, p. 406. 64. Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1989), p. 138. In his opinion, it was an ‘organized campaign’. 65. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 138. 66. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 138. 67. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 138. 68. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, pp. 139–40. 69. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 140. 70. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 140. 71. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 140. 72. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 141. 73. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 142. 74. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 144. 75. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 146. 76. Quoted in Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 5. 77. Sadhana Naithani in Simon Charsley and Laxmi Narayan Kadekar (eds), Performers and Their Arts: Folk, Popular and Classical Genres in a Changing India (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 112. 78. In The Parlour and the Streets, Banerjee has cited two comments in this regard, one by a Bengali bhadralok, the other by an English observer. While the former strived to distinguish between the ideal of love in the past and his own time (‘The ideal of love in

those days was based on physical attraction’), the latter was of the view that European standards of obscenity would have failed if applied to the study of indigenous cultural practices (‘European analogy and distinction somehow fail. It is sometimes difficult here to draw the distinction between obscenity and warmth’). See Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, p. 141. 79. It would be wrong to imply that all the plays of this period were completely indifferent to the suffering of the common people. Plays like Nildarpan, Sadhabar Ekadashi, Buro Shalikher Ghare Ron, Ekei ki Bale Sabhyata, Gajadananda o Jubaraj, Chakardarpan, etc., among others, are the brightest exceptions. 80. Susobhan Sarkar thinks that Our glorious past appeared, however, to be predominantly Hindu, springing from a social cohesion largely unshaken by the new storm and stress. Oriental traditionalism had thus a second element—the consciousness of Hindu superiority. India’s civilization was almost equated with Hindu culture and India itself seemed to be essentially Hindu in its character. The fact that the ‘awakened’ educated community was almost exclusively Hindu by origin lent strength to such assumptions. See Susobhan Sarkar, On the Bengal Renaissance (Calcutta: Papyrus, 1979), p. 73. 81. Quoted in Bhattacharya, Bangla Natyasahityer Itihas, pp. 267–8, translation mine. 82. Manoranjan Bhattacharya, ‘Janagan o Theatre’, Gananatya (October 1989), p. 18. 83. According to Bhattacharya, the ‘modern age’ of Bengali theatre was born of the Swadeshi Movement in 1905. He says that patriotism fathered modernism in Bengali theatre. See Bhattacharya, Bangla Natyasahityer Itihas, pp. 724–5. 84. Bhattacharya, ‘Janagan o Theatre’, Gananatya, p. 19. 85. Sushil Kumar Mukherjee, The Story of the Calcutta Theatres: 1753–1980 (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi and Company, 1982), pp. 127–8. 86. See Ananda Lal’s ‘Introduction’ in Rabindranath Tagore, Three Plays, tr. Ananda Lal (Calcutta: The M.P. Birla Foundation, 1987), p. 20. 87. Lal in Tagore, Three Plays, p. 21. 88. Lal in Tagore, Three Plays, p. 29. I shall discuss this essay later in Chapter Six, in the context of Badal Sircar’s theory and practice. 89. Lal in Tagore, Three Plays, p. 30. 90. Lal in Tagore, Three Plays, p. 33. 91. Darshan Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon (Calcutta: Anustup Prakashani, 1994), pp. 4–5. 92. Mukherjee, The Story of the Calcutta Theatres, p. 154. 93. Mukherjee, The Story of the Calcutta Theatres, p. 158. 94. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, pp. 4–5. 95. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 55.

96. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, pp. 7–8. 97. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 55. 98. Sudhi Pradhan, Gana-Naba-Sat-Goshthi Natyakatha (Calcutta: Krantik Prakashani, 1992), p. 30. 99. Mukherjee, The Story of the Calcutta Theatres, p. 158. 100. Brajendranath Banerjee (in Bengali Stage, p. 17) wrote, significantly enough, At the opening of the second half of the nineteenth century the Bengali stage was already more than fifty years old, but its achievements were still negligible.… The close of the sixth decade of the nineteenth century, however, brought a change. The year 1857 witnessed a sudden outburst of theatrical activity in Calcutta, which not only resulted in the opening of some extremely successful private theatres but also helped in a large measure in the creation of a genuine dramatic literature in Bengali, which had been foreshadowed by a few minor pieces only before that time. 101. Sushil Kumar Mukherjee writes in this regard, ‘The Indian People’s Theatre Association gave a new turn to Bengali drama and Bengali theatre, the fruits of which were later delivered with artistic embellishments by different theatre groups of the city.’ See Mukherjee, The Story of the Calcutta Theatres, p. 258. Himani Bannerji wants to see aptly a non-commercial national, political mobilization in IPTA’s activities that was galvanized by the ‘new protagonist, “the people”’. See Bannerji, The Mirror of Class, p. 46. The peasants and workers started taking centre stage (Bannerji, The Mirror of Class, p. 47), with the aim of reconciling the urban–rural realities and creating a space for dialogue between the middle and working-class people (Bannerji, The Mirror of Class, p. 48). 102. ‘Resolutions and Manifesto of the 1st and 2nd All India Conference of P.W.A’, in Sudhi Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India: Chronicles and Documents (Calcutta: Santi Pradhan, 1985 [vol. 1]), pp. 75–6. 103. Pradhan, Gana-Naba-Sat-Goshthi Natyakatha, p. 56. Pradhan exemplified his point of argument on pp. 55–8. Elsewhere he said, Those who have studied this manifesto may, however, have noticed that … its initial analysis of the Indian situation is couched in vagueness.… [T]he understanding of the pros and cons of cultural movement at the particular historical juncture remains incomplete in the manifesto. This theoretical weakness of the Marxists and the leftists on the cultural front was the reflection of a general lacuna in the political line which was a principal factor in the subsequent breaking up of the broad anti-fascist anti-imperialist front in India. The leaders of the Indian National Congress took advantage of this…. See Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 2, p. 6. 104. ‘Hallet Circular’ in Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 1, p. 107. 105. Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 1, p. xiii.

106. Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 1, pp. xiv–xv. 107. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, pp. 23–4. 108. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 23. 109. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 23. 110. Good readings for this are ‘Indian People’s Theatre Association–Bulletin No. 1’ (in Pradhan [ed.], Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 1, pp. 145–89) and ‘The Constitution of the Indian People’s Theatre Association’ (in Pradhan [ed.], Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 1, pp. 253–63). But Pradhan writes in the Foreword (p. xx) of the same book, ‘The organisation of the cultural movement was never very elaborately or thoughtfully planned’. 111. Bannerji, The Mirror of Class, p. 48. 112. Naithani in Charsley and Kadekar (eds), Performers and Their Arts, p. 113. 113. Naithani in Charsley and Kadekar (eds), Performers and Their Arts, p. 118. 114. Naithani in Charsley and Kadekar (eds), Performers and Their Arts, p. 115. 115. Pradhan, Gana-Naba-Sat-Goshthi Natyakatha, p. 94. 116. Pradhan, Gana-Naba-Sat-Goshthi Natyakatha, pp. 94–112. 117. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, pp. 23–4, 30. 118. Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 1, pp. xix–xx. 119. Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 2, pp. 8–9. He had raised the issue in the Foreword in vol. 1 (p. xxi) as well. 120. Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 1, p. xxi. 121. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 58. 122. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 58. 123. Pradhan, Gana-Naba-Sat-Goshthi Natyakatha, p. 23. Also see Charu Prakash Ghosh in Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 1, pp. 324–32. 124. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 58. 125. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, pp. 56–7. 126. Pradhan, Gana-Naba-Sat-Goshthi Natyakatha, p. 23. 127. Pradhan, Gana-Naba-Sat-Goshthi Natyakatha, pp. 70–1. 128. In Pradhan, Gana-Naba-Sat-Goshthi Natyakatha, pp. 129–30, translation mine. 129. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 57. 130. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 60. 131. Chaudhuri, Gananatya Andolon, p. 61. 132. E.M.S. Namboodiripad in Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 3, pp. 485–6. 133. Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 3, p. ii. 134. Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 3, p. ii. 135. Pradhan (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India, vol. 3, p. iii.

Chapter 2 Politics to Performance: Sprouting Sircari Theatre 1. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, eds David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boelhower (London: Lawrence and Wishart Limited, 1985), p. 132. 2. Badal Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji (Calcutta: Lekhani, 2006), p. 29. 3. My interview with Sircar in December 2004. 4. Badal Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Memorial Lecture 1982 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), p. 5. Here, Sircar narrated his own past in third person as if describing the childhood of a fictitious character. But those who know the story of his childhood will definitely understand that he was referring to his own past. With regard to his ‘choice’ of ‘theatre prevalent in Calcutta’ (p. 5), Sircar restricts the period from the early 1950s to nearly 1970, ‘apparently without any change in his attitude towards such a theatre’ (p. 7). 5. His parents, Mahendra Lal Sircar (a professor of history and later principal of Scottish Church College, Calcutta) and Sarala Mona Sircar, named him Sudhindra Sircar. His paternal uncle, Satindra Lal Sircar, nicknamed him Badal. See Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, pp. 3, 4, 5, 7. 6. Ashoke Nag, ‘The Third Playwright’, The Statesman, interview (16 January 1993). 7. Badal Sircar, Purano Kasundi (Calcutta: Lekhani, 2006 [vol. 1]), pp. 27–8, 39, 47, 51, 28. 8. Nag, ‘The Third Playwright’. 9. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 33, 72. 10. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 73. 11. Nag, ‘The Third Playwright’. 12. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 40–1. 13. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 49–50. 14. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 54. 15. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 57. 16. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 57. 17. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 57–8, 92. 18. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 58, 92. 19. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 62. 20. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 71. 21. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 72. 22. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 73. 23. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 74. 24. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 74, translation mine. 25. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 74.

26. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 92, 100–3. 27. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 121, 123–4. 28. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 126. 29. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 126, translation mine. 30. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 128–9. 31. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 129. 32. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 130. 33. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 132–3. 34. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 133. 35. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 133–4. 36. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 135. 37. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 136. 38. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 136. 39. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 136, 140. 40. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 137. 41. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 138. 42. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 138, translation mine. 43. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 138, translation mine. 44. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 138, translation mine. 45. According to Sircar’s narrative, the inner-party struggle had started before 1950, but officially it started against the revisionist attitude of the party on the eve of the Fourth Congress held at Palakkad in 1956, and reached its climax at the Vijaywada Congress (Sixth Party Congress, 1961). 46. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 140. 47. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 140. 48. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 141. 49. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 141. 50. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 142–3. 51. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, pp. 144–5. 52. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 145, translation mine. 53. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 145. 54. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 145. 55. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 146. 56. Sircar, interview, December 2004. 57. Sircar, interview, December 2004. 58. Sircar, interview, December 2004. 59. Abhijit Sircar, his son, was born in September 1951 and Bharati Sircar, his daughter,

in October 1952. 60. Nag, ‘The Third Playwright’. 61. Nag, ‘The Third Playwright’. 62. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 185. 63. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 187. 64. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 187. 65. Nag, ‘The Third Playwright’. 66. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, pp. 32, 36. 67. Badal Sircar, ‘Bideshe Amar Dekha Natak’ (Plays I Saw Abroad), talk ‘for broadcast on 23 November 1967’, handwritten, Badal Sircar Papers, School of Cultural Texts and Records (Calcutta: Jadavpur University, n.d.), p. 2. 68. Sircar, ‘Bideshe Amar Dekha Natak’, p. 3. In Prabaser Hijibiji, discussion about this play can be found (see pp. 240–1, 247–8). It is probable that he saw it in Paris, where it was transferred in 1963, because he was there that year. 69. Sircar, ‘Bideshe Amar Dekha Natak’, pp. 4–5. 70. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, p. 27. 71. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, p. 29. 72. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 38. 73. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 53. 74. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, pp. 54–5. 75. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 55. 76. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 57. 77. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, pp. 57, 59. 78. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 60. Ram Shyam Jadu was staged on 21 May 1962 at Rangmahal Theatre, and the next day at Minerva Theatre. 79. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 60. 80. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, pp. 66–7. 81. Nag, ‘The Third Playwright’. 82. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, pp. 227–8. 83. Sircar, ‘Bideshe Amar Dekha Natak’, pp. 4–5. 84. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 77. 85. Baki Itihas and Bagh were also read to Chakra members. 86. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 90. 87. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 100. 88. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 101. 89. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, pp. 106, 107, 104. 90. From his diary (entry dated 7 February 1964) and a letter to Manu (dated 8 February 1964), we learn that he first saw African dance in France. See Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, pp.

236–7. 91. Sircar, ‘Bideshe Amar Dekha Natak’, p. 5. 92. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, p. 9. 93. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 108. 94. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, p. 10. 95. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, p. 11. 96. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, p. 11. 97. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, p. 12. 98. Kironmoy Raha, ‘Good Play and a Great Director’, Hindustan Times (6 March 1969). 99. ‘A Play and a Production with a Big Difference’, Amrita Bazar Patrika (2 October 1970). 100. ‘Plays in a National Perspective: First Round Table: A Synoptic Report; Document 1: Badal Sircar Ebong Indrajit and Baki Itihas’, typed transcript (Calcutta: Natya Shodh Sansthan, 28–30 November 1996), pp. 5–6. 101. ‘Bohurupee’s “Pagla Ghora”’, The Statesman (2 April 1971). 102. Samik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Bohurupee’s Extravaganza’, The Economic Times (11 July 1976). 103. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, p. 18. 104. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, pp. 15, 17. 105. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, p. 18. 106. My interview with Samik Bandyopadhyay on 19 June 2013. 107. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, pp. 19, 24, 60. 108. Samik Bandyopadhyay, Badal Sircar, Theatre-er Akashe Nakshatramala, Sayak Natyapatra (Calcutta: Sayak, 2011), p. 135. 109. Badal Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 1983), p. 14. 110. Badal Sircar, The Third Theatre (Calcutta: Badal Sircar, 1978), p. 79.

Chapter 3 Untimely Play-Ing with Lights, Sound, Stage, and Action 1. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, ed. Philip Edwards (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 153–4. 2. Badal Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan (Calcutta: Opera, 1998), p. 9, translation mine. 3. Badal Sircar, Purano Kasundi (Calcutta: Lekhani, 2006 [vol. 1]), p. 80, translation mine. 4. Sumanta Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, Theatre India, no. 2 (November 1999), p. 103. 5. There is even a series of conversations between Anima and Sambhunath, where the two hurl abuses at each other in an inebriated state. See Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan, pp. 29–32.

6. Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 11, translation mine, emphasis mine. 7. M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), pp. 278–9. 8. Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 41, translation mine. 9. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 38. 10. Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 41, translation mine. 11. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 151. 12. Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 66. 13. Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 80. 14. Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 44, translation mine. 15. Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 45, translation mine. 16. Sircar, Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 45, translation mine. 17. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 57. 18. Badal Sircar, Sanibar, in Natya Sanchayan (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 2005), p. 8. 19. Sircar, Sanibar, pp. 28–9. 20. Sircar, Sanibar, p. 17. 21. Badal Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji (Calcutta: Lekhani, 2006), pp. 211–12. 22. Sircar, Sanibar, p. 9, translation mine. 23. Pabitra Sarkar in Badal Sircar, Natak Samagra (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, 2009 [vol. 1]), p. xiii. Also see Badal Sircar, Ram Shyam Jadu (Calcutta: Opera, 1997), p. 5. 24. Michel Foucault, Essential Works of Foucault (1954–1984), ed. James D. Faubion, trans Robert Hurley and others (London: Penguin Books, 2002 [vol. 3]), p. 4. 25. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, letter dated 1 December 1963, p. 216, translation mine. 26. In the introduction to Natak Samagra, Pabitra Sarkar has mentioned the year of its composition, but in the preface to the play, Sircar only wrote that it had never been published before. See Sircar, Natak Samagra, vol. 1, pp. 9, 200. 27. Sircar, ‘Samabritta’, in Natak Samagra, p. 13. 28. Sircar, ‘Samabritta’, in Natak Samagra, p. 200. 29. In The Changing Language of Theatre: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Memorial Lecture 1982 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), p. 13, Sircar elaborated the matter in the following words: He may be more concerned in their problems in general than those of certain individuals; and therefore he may find that prototypes rather than characters would be more suitable to express that the problems are not of one, but of many. He can use four prototypes having rhyming names like Amal Vimal Kamal Nirmal to emphasize the generality. He can give one of them another name—say Indrajit, to show that this person is in some ways different from the other three; but Indrajit is also a prototype, not a character. 30. Badal Sircar, Ebong Indrajit (Calcutta: Anjali Basu, 1995), p. 11.

31. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 61. 32. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 61, translation mine. 33. My interviews with Samik Bandyopadhyay and Pratibha Agrawal were held on 26 April 2008 and 27 January 2009 respectively. Also see Samik Bandyopadhyay, Theatre-er Jalhaway, eds Sekhar Samaddar and Mili Samaddar (Calcutta: Papyrus, 2007), pp. 114–15. 34. Bibhas Chakrabarti, ‘Natyakar Badal Sircar-er Sange Ekti Sakshatkar’, SAS Magazine, no. 16 (1999), p. 250. 35. Chakrabarti, ‘Natyakar Badal Sircar-er Sange Ekti Sakshatkar’, p. 250, translation mine. 36. Chakrabarti, ‘Natyakar Badal Sircar-er Sange Ekti Sakshatkar’, p. 252. 37. ‘Plays in a National Perspective: First Round Table: A Synoptic Report; Document 1: Badal Sircar Ebong Indrajit and Baki Itihas’, typed transcript (Calcutta: Natya Shodh Sansthan, 28–30 November 1996), pp. 4–5. 38. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, letter dated 22 August 1958, p. 54 39. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, letter dated 1 September 1958, p. 59. 40. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, letter dated 1 October 1958, p. 75. 41. Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, p. 109. 42. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, diary entry dated 30 September 1958, p. 74. 43. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, letter dated 24 March 1959, p. 131, translation mine. 44. Badal Sircar, ‘Samiksha-1’, handwritten essay, Badal Sircar Papers, School of Cultural Texts and Records (Calcutta: Jadavpur University, 15 March 1971), p. 1. 45. Jean-Paul Sartre, Sartre on Theater, eds Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka, trans. Frank Jellinek (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), p. 51. 46. Antoine Roquentin is the protagonist of Sartre’s novel Nausea (La Nausée). 47. Sartre, Sartre on Theater, pp. 135–6. 48. Bertell Ollman, Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in Capitalist Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 152. 49. See Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 13; Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 61. 50. Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 13. 51. Sircar, Ebong Indrajit, p. 5, translation mine. 52. Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 13. 53. Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 13. 54. Sircar, Ebong Indrajit, pp. 1, 56, 58, translation mine. 55. Sircar detailed its production in the fourth volume of his autobiography. See Badal Sircar, Purano Kasundi (Calcutta: Anjali Basu, 2009 [vol. 4]), pp. 25–6. Also see his The Third Theatre (Calcutta: Badal Sircar, 1978), p. 68. 56. ‘Plays in a National Perspective’, p. 3.

57. ‘Plays in a National Perspective’, p. 5. 58. Badal Sircar, Sararattir, in Nanamukh (Calcutta: Anjali Basu, 1988), pp. 20, 28, 43, 28, 38, 43–4, translation mine. 59. Sircar, Sararattir, pp. 39, 40. 60. Sircar, Sararattir, p. 40. 61. Sircar, Sararattir, p. 48. 62. Sircar, Sararattir, p. 48. 63. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, pp. 185, 191–2, translation mine. 64. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, p. 243. 65. Sircar, Sararattir, p. 49, translation mine. 66. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, p. 184, translation mine. 67. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, diary entry dated 17 October 1963, p. 199, translation mine. 68. In the interview with Bibhas Chakrabarti, Sircar said, ‘Many people presume that comedies are my first phase, second phase serious plays, third phase theatre-in-theround…. The problem is that I wrote Ballabhpurer Rupkatha and Kabi-kahini after Ebong Indrajit.’ See Chakrabarti, ‘Natyakar Badal Sircar-er Sange Ekti Sakshatkar’, p. 250, translation mine. 69. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 2, p. 66. 70. Sircar, Ballabhpurer Rupkatha, in Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 202. But in Prabaser Hijibiji (p. 201), it is said more credibly that it was completed on 21 October 1963, though, according to Sircar, some corrections and alterations were necessary at that stage. 71. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, p. 199, translation mine. 72. Sarkar in Sircar, Natak Samagra, vol. 1, p. 13. Also see Sircar, Ballabhpurer Rupkatha, p. 201. 73. Sircar, Kabi-kahini, in Ranganatya Sankalan, p. 117, translation mine. 74. Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, p. 104. 75. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 108. 76. Sircar, Kabi-kahini, p. 119, translation mine. 77. Sircar, Kabi-kahini, p. 149, translation mine. 78. The year is mentioned by Sibaji Bandyopadhyay in the Introduction to Badal Sircar, Natak Samagra (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, 2010 [vol. 2]), p. 9. 79. Sircar, ‘Bichitranushthan’, in Natak Samagra, vol. 2, p. 2. 80. Sircar, ‘Bichitranushthan’, in Natak Samagra, vol. 2, p. 2. 81. Badal Sircar, Baki Itihas, in Natya Sankalan (Calcutta: Baulmon Prakashan, 2001). 82. Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, p. 108. 83. Sircar, Baki Itihas, pp. 62–4, translation mine. 84. Sircar, Baki Itihas, p. 65. 85. ‘Plays in a National Perspective’, p. 6.

86. Badal Sircar, Rupantarita Natak (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 2003), p. iii. 87. Sircar, Rupantarita Natak, p. iii. 88. Badal Sircar, Pralap, in Natya Sankalan (Calcutta: Baulmon Prakashan, 2001), p. v. 89. Sircar, Pralap, pp. 126, 145–6, translation mine. 90. Sircar, Pralap, pp. 126, 133, 128–9, 137, 173–4, 189, translation mine. Quotes on pp. pp. 133 and 173–4 note the conversation between Chhaya and Phatik. 91. Sircar, Pare Konodin, in Natya Sankalan, p. 120. 92. See Nandita Sinha in Sudhakar Pandey and Freya Barua (eds), New Directions in Indian Drama: With Special Reference to the Plays of Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, and Girish Karnad (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1994), p. 67. 93. Sircar, Pare Konodin, p. 121, translation mine. 94. Sircar, Pare Konodin, p. 121, translation mine. 95. Badal Sircar, Tringsa Satabdi, in Nanamukh, p. 72, translation mine. 96. Sircar, Tringsa Satabdi, p. 73, translation mine. 97. Sircar, Tringsa Satabdi, p. 102, translation mine. 98. Sircar, Tringsa Satabdi, p. 102. 99. Sircar, Tringsa Satabdi, p. 102, translation mine. 100. Sircar, Tringsa Satabdi, pp. 100–1, translation mine. 101. Bandyopadhyay in Sircar, Natak Samagra, vol. 2, p. xiv. 102. Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theater of Bengal (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1983), p. 140. 103. Bandyopadhyay in Sircar, Natak Samagra, vol. 2, pp. xv–xvi. 104. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 140. 105. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, p. 279. 106. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 140. 107. Badal Sircar, Shankar Kumar Sen, Nirmal Chandra, Debesh Ray, Malini Bhattacharya, Sushil Kr Mukherjee, et al., ‘“No” to Nuclear Power’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 35, nos 21/22 (27 May–2 June 2000), p. 1865. 108. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, pp. 184–5, translation mine. 109. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, pp. 278–9. 110. Anshuman Khanna, ‘Theatre of Badal Sircar: Pedagogy and Praxis’, Indian Literature, vol. 55, no. 5 (September/October 2011), p. 28. 111. Sircar, Natak Samagra, vol. 2, p. 336, translation mine. 112. Sircar, Natak Samagra, vol. 2, pp. 339–76, translation mine. The statement recurred as a refrain in the text. 113. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, letter dated 1 January 1967, pp. 287–8, translation mine. 114. Badal Sircar, Angan, Special Edition (September 1988), p. 1. 115. Veena Noble Dass, Modern Indian Drama in English Translation (Hyderabad: Veena

Noble Dass, 1988), p. 59; K. Venkata Reddy, ‘India’s Barefoot Playwright: Badal Sircar’, in R.K. Dhawan (ed.), Three Indian Playwrights: Tagore, Badal Sircar and Mahasweta Devi—A Critical Response (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2005), p. 106. 116. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 141. 117. Dass, Modern Indian Drama in English Translation, pp. 58, 197. 118. Badal Sircar, Sagina Mahato (Calcutta: Pratibhas, 1993), p. iii. 119. Samik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Tritiya Theatre Bishaye, Aro Ekbar’, interview of Badal Sircar, Angan (September 1987), p. 50. 120. Bandikishore Mitra and Sabuj Mukhopadhyay, Sabcheye Sasta To Manusher Mangsha, Seta Khelei Damta Komto: An Interview with Badal Sircar (Calcutta: Unajan, the minority, 2011), pp. 82–3. 121. Statement of Sircar cited by Ranjan K. Banerjee, ‘Angan Mancha: A New Theatre of Involvement’ (Calcutta: Natya Shodh Sansthan, n.d.), p. 21. 122. Sircar, Circus, in Natak Samagra, vol. 2, p. 469. 123. Badal Sircar, Abu Hossain (Calcutta: Lekhani, 2007), p. 5. 124. Bandyopadhyay in Sircar, Natak Samagra, vol. 3, pp. v, vi, translation mine. 125. Shayoni Mitra, ‘Badal Sircar: Scripting a Movement’, The Drama Review, vol. 48, no. 3 (Autumn 2004), p. 63. 126. Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, p. 104. 127. Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji, p. 185. 128. Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, p. 105. 129. Bandyopadhyay in Sircar, Natak Samagra, vol. 2, pp. xii, xvi. 130. Badal Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre: Shri Ram Memorial Lectures 1992 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), p. 45. 131. Mitra, ‘Badal Sircar’, p. 63. 132. Badal Sircar, ‘Samiksha-2’, handwritten essay, Badal Sircar Papers, School of Cultural Texts and Records (Calcutta: Jadavpur University, 29 March 1971), p. 2, translation mine.

Chapter 4 Theatrical Abode to Open Air: From Thesis to Antithesis 1. These two words have been used lexically, and are in no manner connected with the Western philosophical ideas over their usage. 2. Badal Sircar, The Third Theatre (Calcutta: Badal Sircar, 1978), pp. 11–12. It has to be noted that the process was ongoing as of 1978, when Sircar published this monograph. 3. Badal Sircar, Purano Kasundi (Calcutta: Anjali Basu, 2009 [vol. 4]), p. iii, translation mine. 4. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 25. Sircar informs us that by 1968, he ran out of the money he could spare for theatre, and Satabdi disintegrated due to various reasons. After a

gap of almost a year, they started afresh with a group of mostly new members. See Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 12. 5. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 26. 6. Badal Sircar, Purano Kasundi (Calcutta: Lekhani, 2008 [vol. 3]), p. 24. 7. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 25. 8. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 25. 9. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 26. 10. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 26. 11. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 27. However, its first proscenium production took place at Pratap Memorial Hall on 8 August 1971. 12. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 29, emphases mine. 13. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 29–30. 14. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 30. It was first produced at the ABTA hall on 9 February 1972 (p. 33). 15. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 30. 16. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 34. 17. Badal Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre: Shri Ram Memorial Lectures 1992 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), pp. 12–14. 18. Schechner’s email quoted in Shayoni Mitra, ‘Badal Sircar: Scripting a Movement’, The Drama Review, vol. 48, no. 3 (Autumn 2004), p. 67. 19. He managed the travel and other expenses with the sum he had received from the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship offered by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, and personal savings. See his Purano Kasundi, vol. 3, p. 76. 20. Cobina Gillitt, ‘Richard Schechner’, Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 30, no. 2 (Fall 2013), p. 282. 21. Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theater of Bengal (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1983), p. 146. 22. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, pp. 146–7. 23. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 39–45. 24. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 37. 25. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 37–8. 26. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 38. 27. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 46. 28. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 46. 29. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 46. 30. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 50. 31. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 50. 32. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 47.

33. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 47, 52. 34. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 57–8. 35. My interview with Ananda Lal on 2 September 2012. 36. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 58. 37. One of the most important days in the history of Bengali theatre was 11 December 1971. Silhouette’s presentation of Mukti Ashram at Surendranath Park was, according to Angan, the Third Theatre magazine, the beginning of an alternative theatre in the open air. See Angan (January 1998), p. 1. Having trodden the well-beaten track of the colonial miseen-scène for more than a century, urban Bengali theatre took its first turn in search of regular alternative space after Tagore and the IPTA movement. 38. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 58. 39. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 59. 40. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 59. 41. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 55. 42. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 68. 43. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 58, 69. 44. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 70. 45. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 70. 46. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 58 47. In his interview with Bibhas Chakrabarti, Sircar divulged the financial instability of Satabdi during this period, which they survived by the successful production of these plays. See Bibhas Chakrabarti, ‘Natyakar Badal Sircar-er Sange Ekti Sakshatkar’, SAS Magazine, no. 16 (1999), p. 254. 48. Due to a shortage of new plays and experienced actors. 49. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 73. 50. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 35. 51. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 36. 52. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 74. 53. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 18. 54. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 74. 55. Bandikishore Mitra and Sabuj Mukhopadhyay, Sabcheye Sasta To Manusher Mangsha, Seta Khelei Damta Komto: An Interview with Badal Sircar (Calcutta: Unajan, the minority, 2011), pp. 52–68. 56. Badal Sircar, Michhil (Calcutta: Pratibhas, 1994), p. 3. 57. Sircar, Michhil, p. 5. 58. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 75–6. 59. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 76. 60. Mitra and Mukhopadhyay, Sabcheye Sasta To Manusher Mangsha, p. 33.

61. Badal Sircar, Bhoma, in Natya Sanchayan (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 2005), p. 32, translation mine. 62. Mitra and Mukhopadhyay, Sabcheye Sasta To Manusher Mangsha, pp. 44–5. 63. My interview with Debasish Chakraborty on 21 February 2015. 64. Debasish Chakraborty, ‘Keno ei Parikrama’, in Samik Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Parikrama (Calcutta: Debasish Chakraborty, 1986), p. 4. Parikrama is a collection of memoirs by participants on a three-day cultural tour of several villages from Machhlandapur to Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas. Six theatre groups—Satabdi, Pathasena, Arena Theatre Group, Tirandaj, Thakurnagar Sanskritik Parishad, and Ritam— and two music groups—People’s Art Theatre, Ashoknagar, and Halisahar Sanskritik Chakra—comprising some 70 to 80 participants, participated in the 28–30 March 1986 tour. 65. Interview, Chakraborty, 21 February 2015. 66. Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the World: Essays on Performance and Politics of Culture (New Delhi: Manohar, 1990), p. 305. 67. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 4, p. 25. In an interview with Subhendu Sarkar, Sircar mentioned Sagina Mahato’s presentation, instead of Sesh Nei, during this stint. See Subhendu Sarkar in Badal Sircar, Two Plays: Indian History Made Easy/Life of Bagala, trans. Subhendu Sarkar (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 114. These kinds of discrepancies are common in Sircar’s descriptions. 68. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 4, p. 31. 69. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 4, p. 29. 70. Sarkar in Sircar, Two Plays, pp. 116–18. 71. Sarkar in Sircar, Two Plays, p. 118; Purano Kasundi, vol. 4, p. 51. 72. Gowri Ramnarayan, ‘The Endless Road of Badal Sircar’s “Free Theatre”’, Frontline (28 August 1992), p. 77. 73. My interview with Sircar in December 2004. 74. Ramnarayan, ‘The Endless Road of Badal Sircar’s “Free Theatre”’, p. 77. 75. Translator’s note to ‘Janaganer Sanskriti Janaganke Phiriye Dao’ by Clare and Britto, Angan, Special Edition (October 1993), p. 104. In this essay, Clare and Britto narrated their experience of ‘street theatre’. 76. Jacob Srampickal, Voice to the Voiceless: The Power of People's Theatre in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1994), p. 181. 77. Quoted in Srampickal, Voice to the Voiceless, pp. 161–2. 78. Srampickal, Voice to the Voiceless, p. 162. 79. Srampickal, Voice to the Voiceless, pp. 162–3. 80. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 4, p. 62, translation mine. 81. Sarkar, ‘Facets of the Third Theatre’, in Two Plays, p. 113. 82. Srampickal, Voice to the Voiceless, pp. 163–4.

83. Srampickal, Voice to the Voiceless, p. 156. 84. Srampickal, Voice to the Voiceless, p. 157. 85. Srampickal, Voice to the Voiceless, p. 195. 86. Heisnam Kanhailal, ‘Badal Sircar’, translated and transcribed by Samik Bandyopadhyay, Amritalok, no. 75 (October–December 1995), pp. 80–1. Originally published in Angan (October 1993). 87. Tapas Mukhopadhyay, ‘Amader Badalda’, Amritalok, no. 75 (October–December 1995), pp. 67–72. 88. Ishrat Nishat, ‘Badal Sircarer Dhakay Samayik Basabas’, Amritalok, no. 75 (October–December 1995), pp. 73–7. 89. Jo Trowsdale, ‘Sitting in Badal’s Circle: Artist and Pedagogue—The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, vol. 2, no. 1 (1997), pp. 43–54. 90. Shamsul Islam, ‘It Won’t Be “Free” Theatre’, interview of Badal Sircar, The Times of India (11 October 1992). 91. Samik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Badal Sircar-er Sange’, Amritalok, no. 75 (October– December 1995), p. 125. The interview was with Sircar, but Debashish—a member of Angan Theatre Group—interjected with this information on the workshop/theatre activities in northeast India. 92. Here again Debashish broke in to provide the details. See Bandyopadhyay, ‘Badal Sircar-er Sange’, p. 126. 93. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 4, p. 62, translation mine. 94. Trowsdale, ‘Sitting in Badal’s Circle’, pp. 53–4. 95. Bill McDonnell, ‘Towards a Theatre of “Little Changes”: A Dialogue about Dialogue’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, vol. 10, no. 1 (2005), pp. 70–1. 96. Jo Trowsdale, ‘Reconsidering the Role of Artists in Initial Teacher Training’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, vol. 7, no. 2 (2002), pp. 185–6. 97. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 182. 98. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 182. 99. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 183. 100. My interview with Smarajit Jana on 20 February 2015. 101. The plays were produced at Sonagachi. Interview, Jana, 20 February 2015. 102. My interview with Geeta Mandal, Pramila Singh, and Putul Singh on 9 March 2015. 103. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 25. 104. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 38. 105. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 27. 106. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 38.

107. Badal Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Memorial Lecture 1982 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), p. 13. 108. Literally, without complex words and pleasing to the common people. Bharata, ‘Bagbhinay’, in Natyasastra, ed. Suresh Chandra Bandyopadhyay, trans Suresh Chandra Bandyopadhyay and Chhanda Chakraborti (Calcutta: Nabapatra Prakashan, 1982 [vol. 2]), chapter 17, p. 190, translation mine.

Chapter 5 Voices in Utopia, in Pursuit of Dreams 1. Charles Chaplin’s statement quoted by Jennifer Lynde Barker, The Aesthetics of Antifascist Films: Radical Projection (New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 107. 2. Badal Sircar, Sagina Mahato (Calcutta: Pratibhas, 1993), p. 47, translation mine. Here we can presume that the play was written in view of the 1971 election, in which the ULF got the majority, yet ironically they were not invited to form the government. 3. Refer to Jatin’s statement in Sircar, Sagina Mahato, p. 29. 4. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, p. 45, translation mine. 5. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, pp. 36–7. 6. Refer to the conversation between Gora and Sagina in Sircar, Sagina Mahato, p. 41. 7. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, pp. 51, 54, translation mine. 8. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, p. 54, translation mine. 9. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, p. 55. 10. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, p. 54, translation mine. 11. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, p. 56. 12. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, pp. 58–9, translation mine. 13. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, pp. 63–4. 14. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, pp. 56–7. 15. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, pp. 72–3, translation mine. A more literal translation would be ‘In the name of workers’ welfare, I danced like a monkey. Yes, just monkey dance’. 16. Sircar, Sagina Mahato, p. 73. 17. Adrish Biswas, ‘Badal Sircar-er Sange Sakshatkar’, in Amritalok, no. 75 (October– December 1995), p. 104. 18. Badal Sircar, Spartacus (Calcutta: Anjali Basu, 1997), p. iii. 19. Badal Sircar, The Third Theatre (Calcutta: Badal Sircar, 1978), pp. 54–5. 20. Sircar, Spartacus, p. iii. 21. Samik Bandyopadhyay, interview of Badal Sircar (Calcutta: Natya Shodh Sansthan, n.d.), p. 5. 22. Badal Sircar, Suitcase, in Natak Samagra (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, 2012 [vol. 3]), p. 182. In Asquith’s The Yellow Rolls-Royce, a 1930 yellow Rolls-Royce Phantom II was used to draw up the story of three very different owners—an English aristocrat, a Miami

gangster, and a wealthy American widow. 23. Sircar, Bij, in Natak Samagra, vol. 3, pp. 201–5. 24. Badal Sircar, Michhil (Calcutta: Pratibhas, 1994), p. 9. The mockery is evident in the Old Man’s voice. 25. Sircar, Michhil, pp. 36–7, translation mine. 26. Sircar, Michhil, p. 26, translation mine. 27. ‘Khoka’ means youth or young man. 28. Sircar, Michhil, pp. 39–40, 41, 43, translation mine. 29. Sarbani Sen in Sudhakar Pandey and Freya Barua (eds), New Directions in Indian Drama: With Special Reference to the Plays of Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, and Girish Karnad (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1994), p. 76. 30. Quoted by Veena Noble Dass, Modern Indian Drama in English Translation (Hyderabad: Veena Noble Dass, 1988), pp. 72–3. 31. Partha Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 287–8. Chatterjee borrowed the idea of ‘passive revolution’ from Antonio Gramsci. Sudipta Kaviraj also discussed the term in ‘A Critique of the Passive Revolution’ in the same book. 32. Prabhat Patnaik in Partha Chatterjee (ed.), Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian Nation-State (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 39–40. 33. Sudipta Kaviraj in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, p. 59. 34. Ranabir Samaddar, A Biography of the Indian Nation: 1947–1997 (New Delhi: Thousand Oaks and London: SAGE Publications, 2001), p. 40. According to Samaddar, the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s was a period of ancien régime. 35. Kaviraj in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, p. 60. 36. Atul Kohli, The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform (Cambridge and Bombay: Cambridge University Press, in association with Orient Longman, 1987), p. 61. Later, he disproves Nehru’s attempts at establishing public industry (heavy or basic) as manifestation of socialism (pp. pp. 64–5). With the reduction of state autonomy, private enterprises had to be supported alternatively (p. 61). 37. Kaviraj in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, p. 59. 38. Kaviraj in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, p. 60. 39. Kohli, The State and Poverty in India, p. 61. 40. Kohli, The State and Poverty in India, p. 61. 41. Kohli, The State and Poverty in India, p. 61. 42. Kohli, The State and Poverty in India, p. 61. 43. Patnaik in Chatterjee (ed.), Wages of Freedom, p. 41. 44. Patnaik in Chatterjee (ed.), Wages of Freedom, p. 40. 45. Patnaik in Chatterjee (ed.), Wages of Freedom, p. 37. 46. Kohli, The State and Poverty in India, p. 70.

47. Kaviraj in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, pp. 60, 78. 48. Samaddar, A Biography of the Indian Nation, p. 41. 49. Samaddar, A Biography of the Indian Nation, p. 41. 50. Samaddar, A Biography of the Indian Nation, p. 41. 51. Samaddar, A Biography of the Indian Nation, p. 41. 52. Samaddar, A Biography of the Indian Nation, p. 42. 53. Samaddar, A Biography of the Indian Nation, p. 42. 54. Samaddar, A Biography of the Indian Nation, p. 214. 55. T.V. Sathyamurthy in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, pp. 244–5. 56. Sathyamurthy in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, pp. 245–6. 57. Sathyamurthy in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, p. 248. 58. Sathyamurthy in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, p. 249. 59. Sathyamurthy in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, p. 249. 60. Kaviraj in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, p. 78. 61. Sumanta Banerjee, In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India (Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1980), p. 75. 62. By the end of 1947, Joshi, the general secretary of the CPI, in revision of the party’s attitude towards the new government, made distinctions between Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru and decided to support the latter. Later, Ranadive hailed both democratic and socialist revolution as means to achieve people’s democratic revolution for which he was criticized by the international communist leadership and was replaced by C. Rajeswara Rao. Emphasizing the ‘coalition of all democratic, anti-feudal, anti-imperialist forces’, the 1951 thesis of the CPI denounced any attempt of ‘individual terrorism’, although, in a secret document, the party stressed on the need for guerrilla warfare. However, coalition policy and parliamentarianism were further encouraged by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in February 1956. Banerjee cited one incident to show how the CPI at that point in time had been trying to strike balance in the interests of the rich, poor peasants, and agricultural labourers. See Banerjee, In the Wake of Naxalbari, pp. 78–9, 86, 87, 90–2. 63. Banerjee has cited a communist leader of the Tebhaga movement where he appealed to the peasantry not to ‘launch direct action’ against the new government. And speaking of the Telangana movement, Banerjee observed a little later that instead of doing something concrete, the all-India leadership of the party was divided into two groups over what should be the line of action regarding the movement. See Banerjee, In the Wake of Naxalbari, pp. 78, 82. 64. In 1956 at the Palghat Congress, the CPI issued a ridiculous report: The struggle to build the democratic front involves a policy of simultaneous unity with and struggle against the bourgeoisie.… [I]t should not be conceded that the democratic front will be an anti-Congress front.… Although the political party of the bourgeoisie which has

taken many landlords in its folds, the Congress has, among its members, a vast number of democratic elements. It has an anti-imperialist and democratic tradition. Quoted by Banerjee, In the Wake of Naxalbari, p. 92. Again and again, we come across such situations when the communists and the Congress went hand-in-hand, and yet the Lefts maintained a verbal distance on account of difference of policy. 65. Even after the formation of the CPI(M), it had to carry on ‘with suppressed radicals in its ranks’. Many were against the ‘peaceful means’ of the new party. See Banerjee, In the Wake of Naxalbari, p. 95. 66. Partha Chatterjee, The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 87. 67. Chatterjee, The Present History of West Bengal, p. 90. 68. Chatterjee, The Present History of West Bengal, pp. 91–2. 69. Badal Sircar, Lakshmichharar Panchali, in Tritiya Dharar Natak (Calcutta: Anjali Basu, 1998), p. 16, translation mine. 70. Sircar, Lakshmichharar Panchali, pp. 17–18. 71. Sircar claimed that At the performances our group Satabdi observed that the song was running more successfully in the countryside. All the information is available to the villagers, still they are interested. Maybe, because it is their story. Lakshmichharar Panchali was even published by their demand and arrangements have been made to sell it without any profits. No royalty charge has to be paid to sing it. I will be happy if I am told who is performing and where it is being performed. See Sircar, Lakshmichharar Panchali, p. 6. 72. Sircar, Lakshmichharar Panchali, p. 18, translation mine. Most of the expressions are rhymed in original, as they constitute a song. 73. Sircar’s statement quoted by Samik Bandyopadhyay in his ‘Introduction’ to Sircar’s ‘Beyond the Land of Hattamala’ and ‘Scandal in Fairyland’, trans. Suchanda Sarkar (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2003), p. viii. 74. Bandyopadhyay in Sircar, Natak Samagra, vol. 3, p. xv. 75. Sircar, ‘Beyond the Land of Hattamala’ and ‘Scandal in Fairyland’, p. viii. 76. Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay founded the theatre group Nandikar in 1960. The group, headquartered in Calcutta, is still functional. 77. Badal Sircar, Natyakarer Sandhane Tinti Charitra, Angan (January 1998), pp. 9–24. 78. In Bengali, the characters are called Dami, Majhari, and Sasta, which can also be construed as the rich, the middle, and the poor, respectively. 79. Sircar, Natyakarer Sandhane Tinti Charitra, p. 11, translation mine. 80. The prices may seem ridiculous now but at that time these rates were exorbitant.

81. A measure of land equal to 320 square cubits. 82. A measure of land equal to 6,400 square cubits, one-third acre approximately. 83. The Cheap means to say that last year he got the land for sharecropping. 84. A creditor, a usurer, a moneylender. 85. IR8 is a type of paddy; BDO stands for block development officer; Ratna is a type of paddy; and shallow refers to a shallow pump set. 86. Sircar, Natyakarer Sandhane Tinti Charitra, pp. 17–19, 22–4, translation mine. 87. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, eds and trans Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 14. 88. Badal Sircar, Bhoma, in Natya Sanchayan (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 2005), p. 59, translation mine. 89. Ketaki Kushari Dyson, ‘Bhoma: Ekti Smaraniya Abhigyata’, in Amritalok, no. 75 (October–December 1995), p. 58. 90. Sircar, Bhoma, p. 60, translation mine. 91. Sircar, Bhoma, p. 53, translation mine. 92. Badal Sircar, Sukhapathya Bharater Itihas (Calcutta: Opera, 1981). 93. Quoted in R. Palme Dutt, India To-day (Calcutta: Manisha, 1970), p. 79. 94. Dutt, India To-day, p. 79. 95. Dutt, India To-day, p. 82. 96. My interview with Sircar in December 2004. In Anandabazar Patrika and Sephis eMagazine, this part was omitted. 97. Karl Marx, Karl Marx on India: From the New York Daily Tribune (Including Articles by Frederick Engels) and Extracts from Marx–Engels Correspondence—1853– 1862, ed. Iqbal Husain (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2006). 98. Badal Sircar, Hattamalar Opare, in Tritiya Dharar Natak. 99. Sircar, ‘Beyond the Land of Hattamala’ and ‘Scandal in Fairyland’, p. ix. 100. Sircar, ‘Beyond the Land of Hattamala’ and ‘Scandal in Fairyland’, p. x. 101. Sircar, ‘Beyond the Land of Hattamala’ and ‘Scandal in Fairyland’, p. ix. 102. Sircar, ‘Beyond the Land of Hattamala’ and ‘Scandal in Fairyland’, p. x. 103. My interview with Sircar in December 2004. 104. Judith Malina, The Diaries of Judith Malina: 1947–1957 (New York: Grove Press, 1983), p. 6. 105. Badal Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre: Shri Ram Memorial Lectures 1992 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), p. 29. 106. Interview, Sircar, December 2004. 107. Interview, Sircar, December 2004. 108. Interview, Sircar, December 2004, emphasis mine.

109. Interview, Sircar, December 2004. 110. Badal Sircar, Rupantarita Natak (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 2003), pp. 3–4. 111. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 29. 112. Arundhati Banerjee, ‘Brecht Adaptations in Modern Bengali Theatre: A Study in Reception’, Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 7, no. 1 (Spring 1990), pp. 12–14. 113. Rustam Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theater of Bengal (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1983), p. 186. 114. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 25. 115. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 25. 116. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 39. 117. The Maintenance of Internal Security Act passed by the Parliament in 1971, gave Indira Gandhi’s administration full power to suppress every kind of civil and political disorder in the country, by means of indefinite preventive detention of individuals, search and seizure of property without warrants, and other measures. 118. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 39. 119. ‘Basi Khabar was prepared on the bases of Satabdi’s work. Collection of news, information, ascertainment of viewpoints were done collectively. Finally, I gave the result of that collective effort the shape of a play.’ See Badal Sircar, Basi Khabar, in Natya Sanchayan (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 2005), p. 74. 120. Sircar, Basi Khabar, p. 108, translation mine. 121. Sircar, Basi Khabar, p. 111. 122. K. Venkata Reddy, ‘India’s Barefoot Playwright: Badal Sircar’, in R.K. Dhawan (ed.), Three Indian Playwrights: Tagore, Badal Sircar and Mahasweta Devi—A Critical Response (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2005), p. 109. 123. Sircar, Basi Khabar, in Natya Sanchayan, p. 112, translation mine. 124. Sircar, Bhoma, p. 55, translation mine. 125. Sircar, Basi Khabar, p. 112, translation mine. 126. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 33. 127. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, pp. 40, 41. 128. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 33. 129. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 34. 130. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, pp. 40, 41. 131. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 41. 132. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, pp. 40–1. 133. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, pp. 41–2. 134. Satabdi, Manushey Manushey, typewritten transcript (Calcutta: Natya Shodh Sansthan, n.d.), pp. 1, 7–8. 135. Badal Sircar, Androcles o Singha, Angan (October 1993), p. 95, translation mine.

136. Sircar, Androcles o Singha, p. 95. 137. Badal Sircar, Udyogaparva, in Tritiya Dharar Natak, p. 65. 138. Sircar, Udyogaparva, pp. 69–70. 139. Sircar, Udyogaparva, pp. 82–4. 140. Sircar, Udyogaparva, pp. 71–4. 141. Foucault’s statement cited in Colin Gordon’s Introduction to Michel Foucault, Essential Works of Foucault (1954–1984), ed. James D. Faubion, trans Robert Hurley and others (London: Penguin Books, 2002 [vol. 3]), pp. xv–xvi. 142. Foucault, Essential Works of Foucault, p. 12. 143. Foucault, Essential Works of Foucault, p. 32. 144. Foucault, Essential Works of Foucault, p. 333. 145. Subhendu Sarkar in Badal Sircar, Two Plays: Indian History Made Easy, Life of Bagala, trans. Subhendu Sarkar (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 121–2. 146. Badal Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, in Natya Sanchayan, p. 118. 147. Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, p. 124. This is a paraphrase of a rhymed verse. 148. Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, p. 126. 149. Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, p. 126. 150. Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, p. 131. 151. Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, p. 132. 152. Petos are jute-made bombs. Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, p. 144. 153. Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, p. 152. 154. Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, p. 155. 155. Sircar, Khat Mat Kring, p. 159, translation mine. 156. Sircar, Bhoma, p. 55; Sircar, Basi Khabar, p. 96. 157. Sircar, Sinri, in Natya Sanchayan, pp. 173, 184–5. 158. Sircar, Sinri, p. 165, translation mine. 159. Sircar, Sinri, pp. 165–6. 160. Sircar, Sinri, p. 170, translation mine. 161. Sircar, Sinri, p. 173, translation mine. 162. Sircar, Sinri, p. 185, translation mine. 163. Sircar, Sinri, p. 196. 164. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, pp. 42–3. 165. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 46. 166. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, pp. 45–6. 167. Sircar, Bhul Rasta, in Natya Sanchayan, p. 210, translation mine. 168. Badal Sircar, Bioscope, in Angan, Special Issue, nos 13–17 (December 1990), p. 14. 169. Badal Sircar, Ka Cha Ta Ta Pa, in Angan (January 1997), p. 18. The title stands for

letters of the Bengali alphabet. 170. FAO, IFAD, and WFP, ‘The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015. Meeting the 2015 International Hunger Targets: Taking Stock of Uneven Progress’ (Rome: FAO, 2015), p. 15, available at http://www.fao.org/3/a4ef2d16-70a7-460a-a9ac2a65a533269a/i4646e.pdf, accessed on 28 May 2015. 171. National Crime Records Bureau, ‘Table-2.11: Profile of Suicide Victims Categorised by Profession—2013 (State, UT & City-wise)’ (New Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, 2013), pp. 242–3, available at http://ncrb.gov.in/adsi2013/table2.11.pdf, accessed on 1 May 2015. The 2014 report shows slight decrease in the death rate. See National Crime Records Bureau, ‘Chapter-2A: Farmer Suicides in India’ (New Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, 2014), pp. 266–71, available at http://ncrb.gov.in/ADSI2014/chapter-2A%20farmer%20suicides.pdf, accessed on 10 August 2015. A good read is P. Sainath, ‘Have India’s Farm Suicides Really Declined?’ (14 July 2014) available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-28205741, accessed on 1 May 2015. 172. In the preface to his report, Arjun K. Sengupta, director, National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, Government of India, wrote to the former prime minister of India, Mr Manmohan Singh on 6 August 2007: One of the major highlights of this Report is the existence and quantification of unorganised or informal workers, defined as those who do not have employment security, work security and social security. These workers are engaged not only in the unorganised sector but in the organised sector as well. This universe of informal workers now constitutes 92 percent of the total workforce. We have also highlighted, based on an empirical measurement, the high congruence between this segment of the workforce and 77 percent of the population with a per capita daily consumption of up to Rs. 20 (in 2004–05) whom we have called ‘Poor and Vulnerable’. The number of persons belonging to this group increased from 811 million in 1999–00 to 836 million in 2004–05. See Arjun Sengupta, ‘Report on Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector’, available at nceus.gov.in/Condition_of_workers_sep_2007.pdf, accessed on 28 August 2010. As the website no longer exists, some other interesting information on National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector can be found at http://sanhati.com/articles/8325/, accessed on 1 May 2015. 173. Naazneen Karmali, ‘A Record 90 Indians on Forbes Billionaires List 2015’ (3 March 2015) available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/naazneenkarmali/2015/03/03/a-record-90indians-on-forbes-billionaires-list-2015/, accessed on 1 May 2015. 174. Friends of River Narmada, ‘The Sardar Sarovar Dam: A Brief Introduction’ (10 May 2006) available at http://www.narmada.org/sardarsarovar.html, accessed on 28 August 2010. 175. ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan (Petitioner) vs. Union of India and Ors. (Respondents): Supreme Court of India, Record of Proceedings, I.A. Nos. 18–22 in writ petition (civil) No.

328 of 2002, Case No. 328 of 2002, Order of 8 May 2006’ (Geneva: International Environmental Law Research Centre), p. 2, available at http://www.ielrc.org/content/c0606.pdf, accessed on 10 August 2015. 176. See Susobhan Sarkar, On the Bengal Renaissance (Calcutta: Papyrus, 1979), p. 73. 177. Interview, Sircar, December 2004. 178. Sircar, Two Plays, p. 122. 179. Sircar, Ka Cha Ta Ta Pa, p. 9. 180. Sircar, Two Plays, p. 122. 181. We have to remember here that Churna Prithibi is a compilation of his previous plays; scripts of some plays are absent, and some are out of print; among them, Janmabhumi Aj is a poetic montage. 182. Sircar, ‘Beyond the Land of Hattamala’ and ‘Scandal in Fairyland’, p. ix. 183. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, pp. 33, 37. 184. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 39. 185. See Sircar’s ‘Preface’ to Suitcase, in Natak Samagra, vol. 3, p. 182, translation mine. 186. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 41. 187. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 40, emphasis mine. 188. Roland Barthes, A Roland Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag (London: Vintage, 2000), p. 192. 189. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 79. 190. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 132. 191. Sircar, Michhil, p. 35, translation mine. 192. Sircar, Michhil, p. 15. 193. Sircar, Michhil, p. 23, translation mine. 194. Sircar, Purano Kasundi, vol. 1, p. 138. 195. Sircar, Bhoma, pp. 36–7, translation mine. 196. Sircar, Bhoma, p. 68, translation mine. 197. Sircar, Bhoma, p. 34, translation mine. 198. Sircar, Bhoma, p. 51, translation mine. 199. Sircar, Bhoma, p. 33, translation mine. 200. See Sircar, Bhoma, p. 32. 201. Badal Sircar, Ebong Indrajit (Calcutta: Anjali Basu, 1995), pp. 2, 5, translation mine. 202. Sircar, Ebong Indrajit, p. 5. 203. Sircar, Ebong Indrajit, p. 3, translation mine, bold emphasis mine. 204. Sumanta Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, Theatre India, no. 2 (November 1999), p. 112. 205. Barthes, A Roland Barthes Reader, p. 187.

Chapter 6 A Theatre of Contradictions 1. Roland Barthes, A Roland Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag (London: Vintage, 1993), pp. 125–9. 2. Utpal Dutt says, ‘Their apparent poverty and disinterest in publicity are a camouflage which fools many honest intellectuals. They [the Third Theater] are a movement supported by the reactionary kulaks [sic] in New Delhi, to oppress the powerful political theater in Bengal. Their object is to confront the political theater with confusing intellectual acrobatics.’ See Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theater of Bengal (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1983), p. 129. Kumar Roy (in ‘Bhinna Prothar Theatre: Ekti Proshno’), Dipendu Chakraborty (‘E Darshak Se Darshak Noy’), and Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay (‘Third Theatre’) also criticized the Third Theatre. [These articles appeared in Bengali theatre journal Theatre Bulletin (July–August 1980), pp. 14–15, 23–5, and 35–6, respectively.] Rafikul Islam (presumably the nom de plume of Utpal Dutt) made sharp and sarcastic comments against Sircar’s seminal book The Third Theatre in the same issue of the Theatre Bulletin (pp. 26–31). The journal published one editorial essay of another Bengali theatre journal, Group Theatre (2nd year, 4th issue), which also opined against the Third Theatre. See Theatre Bulletin, pp. 22–3. 3. Badal Sircar, The Third Theatre (Calcutta: Badal Sircar, 1978), p. 2. In Towards a Third Theatre: Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), Ian Watson wrote that ‘Barba’s ideas on the sociology of theatre are encapsulated in what he refers to as “third theatre,” a concept which he defines in relation to institutionalized theatre and the avant-garde’ (p. 18). However, Sircar claimed to develop his ideas of the ‘Third Theatre’ against folk theatre, which, according to him, was the first type of theatre, and the urban Western theatre, the second type of theatre; see his Theatreer Bhasha (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 1983), p. 10. But the ways (of expression) both propounded in their ideas on this type of theatre bear striking similarities. In the same book Watson wrote (p. 21): In the third theatre [of Barba] there is no difference between a personal and professional life, since how theatre is made takes precedence over what is produced. For members of the third theatre, content and form are often less important than a group’s socio-cultural philosophy and how that philosophy is realized in its daily work and reflected in its productions. The Odin Teatret, Barba’s own group and the model for third theatre, has been criticized for lacking a political agenda in its productions. But these attacks fail to take into account the socio-political implications of group dynamics taking precedence over what is produced—the very foundation of Barba’s approach to theatre. In Sircar’s case, his third theatre is more content-based than form-based with a dash of politics. In an article by Darshan Chaudhuri, Sircar claimed that any alternative theatre could be logically called the Third Theatre. He used the name in that sense and denied using the title after Barba’s theatre or Robert Brustein’s The Third Theatre. See Darshan

Chaudhuri, ‘Third Theatre o Badal Sircar’, in Natya Akademi Patrika, Street Theatre issue no. 9 (Calcutta: Paschimbanga Natya Akademi, Department of Information and Culture, Government of West Bengal, 2004), p. 69. 4. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 3. 5. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, pp. 7–18. 6. Badal Sircar, untitled handwritten essay, Badal Sircar Papers, School of Cultural Texts and Records (Calcutta: Jadavpur University, n.d.), p. 3, translation mine. In the first line, he referred to Littlewood’s performance, and in the last, he referred to the performance of his Sagina Mahato. 7. Badal Sircar, ‘Bideshe Amar Dekha Natak’, talk ‘for broadcast on 23 November 1967’, handwritten, Badal Sircar Papers, School of Cultural Texts and Records (Calcutta: Jadavpur University, n.d.), p. 4, translation mine. The auditorium he refers to is the Théâtre en rond. 8. Stephen Joseph, Theatre in the Round (London: Barrie and Rockcliff, 1967), pp. 7, 11. 9. Joseph, Theatre in the Round, p. 16. 10. Joseph, Theatre in the Round, p. 28. 11. Joseph, Theatre in the Round, pp. 28–9. The extract from Tagore comes from his essay ‘The Stage’, which I deal with subsequently. 12. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, p. 14. 13. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Rangamancha’, in Rabindra Rachanabali (Calcutta: VisvaBharati, 1940 [vol. 5]), pp. 449–53. 14. Tagore, Tapati, in Rabindra Rachanabali (Calcutta: Visva-Bharati, 1989 [vol. 11]), p. 157. 15. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 25. 16. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 23–4. In an interview with Chaman Ahuja, Sircar, for the first time, referred to Peter Brook and Joseph Chaikin in the list of the most influential personalities, whom he either rejected or adapted. See Chaman Ahuja, ‘Scripting Body Language: Face to Face with Badal Sircar’, interview of Badal Sircar, Hindustan Times (1 November 1998). 17. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 67. 18. M. Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, trans. S. Ketkar, vol. 1, part 1 (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1962), p. 3. 19. Quoted by Clive Barker in Alison Hodge (ed.), Twentieth Century Actor Training (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 115. 20. Sumanta Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, Theatre India, no. 2 (November 1999), p. 113. 21. Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, p. 116. 22. Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1989), p. 92.

23. Badal Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre: Shri Ram Memorial Lectures 1992 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), p. 27. 24. Adrish Biswas, ‘Badal Sircar-er Sange Sakshatkar’, in Amritalok, no. 75 (October– December 1995), p. 106, translation mine. Instead of using the surnames, the initials of the interviewer and interviewee have been used in the original. 25. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 22. 26. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, p. 14, translation mine. 27. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, p. 40, translation mine. 28. Kathryn Hansen, ‘Indian Folk Traditions and the Modern Theatre’, Asian Folklore Studies, vol. 42, no. 1 (1983), p. 80. 29. Richard Schechner, ‘A Reply to Rustom Bharucha’, Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1984), p. 250. 30. Rustom Bharucha, ‘A Reply to Richard Schechner’, Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1984), p. 258. 31. Schechner, ‘A Reply to Rustom Bharucha’, p. 251. 32. Samik Bandyopadhyay (ed.), ‘Introduction’, in Parikrama (Calcutta: Debashish Chakraborty, 1986), p. iii. 33. Similarly, Lakshmichharar Panchali reminded Sumanta Banerjee of the creative style of Hemanga Biswas, whose Mountbatten-Mangalkavya was drawn on various folk traditions. See Banerjee, ‘The Theatre of Badal Sircar’, p. 116. 34. Dulal Kar, ‘Kapileshwarpur’, in Parikrama, p. 38. 35. Erin O’Donnell, ‘The Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA) on Film: (Con)testing Memory and History in the Bengali Theaterscapes of Ritwik Ghatak’s Komal Gandhar (E Flat, 1961)’, South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 8, no. 3 (2010), p. 272. 36. Badal Sircar, Purano Kasundi (Calcutta: Lekhani, 2006 [vol. 1]), p. 60. 37. Bibhas Chakrabarti, ‘Natyakar Badal Sircar-er Sange Ekti Sakshatkar’, SAS Magazine, no. 16 (1999), p. 248. In this interview, Sircar mentioned that he liked two performances by the IPTA: Spirit of India and India Immortal. He was a party member then, and volunteered for their productions. 38. Sandip Saha, ‘Amra Kara’, in Parikrama, p. 10. 39. Apu Chattopadhyay, ‘Keno ei Parikrama’, in Parikrama, p. 6. 40. Beliaghata, or Beleghata, is situated in the heart of Calcutta. 41. Debasish Chakraborty, ‘Keno ei Parikrama’, in Parikrama, p. 3, translation mine, emphasis mine. 42. Chakraborty, ‘Keno ei Parikrama’, in Parikrama, p. 4, translation mine. 43. People’s Art Theatre, ‘Keno ei Parikrama’, in Parikrama, p. 9, translation mine. 44. My interview with Samik Bandyopadhyay on 4 September 2009. 45. Chakraborty, ‘Keno ei Parikrama’, in Parikrama, pp. 4–5; Gautam Sengupta, ‘Ki Peyechi’, in Parikrama, p. 54; Saha, ‘Anya Udyaog, Prishthaposhona’, in Parikrama, p.

63. 46. Ian Watson and Colleagues, Negotiating Cultures: Eugenio Barba and the Intercultural Debate (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 96. 47. Saha, ‘Anya Udyaog, Prishthaposhona’, in Parikrama, p. 63. 48. ‘The playwright can very well find that what he wants to say cannot be effectively or adequately said through a story with characters having definite identities. A character may be too limiting in its individuality, a story may be too specific to suit his subject.’ See Badal Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Lecture 1982 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), pp. 12–13. 49. Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 13. 50. Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 18. 51. Elaine Aston and George Savona, Theatre as Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 116. 52. ‘He does these because of his increased dependence on the human being—the performer’s body on one hand, and the spectator’s imagination on the other.’ See Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 18. 53. Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 18. 54. Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 13. 55. Samik Bandyopadhyay, interview of Badal Sircar, handwritten (Calcutta: Natya Shodh Sansthan, n.d.), pp. 7–8. 56. Roland Barthes, A Roland Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag (London: Vintage, 2000), p. 187. 57. Ashu Mukhopadhyay, ‘Parikrama: Tin Din’, in Parikrama, p. 15. 58. Mukhopadhyay, ‘Parikrama’, in Parikrama, p. 16; Kar, ‘Grambasider Matamat’, in Parikrama, p. 19; Saha, ‘Sutia Paruipara’, in Parikrama, p. 44; Parag Mitra [sic; Maitra], ‘Biplabatmak Ghatona-Theatre-e Jatota Sambhab’, in Parikrama, p. 61. 59. Kar, ‘Thakurnagar’, in Parikrama, p. 50; Sengupta, ‘Ki Peyechi’, in Parikrama, p. 55. 60. Partha Chattopadhyay, ‘Grambasider Matamat’, in Parikrama, p. 18; Kar, ‘Grambasider Matamat’, in Parikrama, p. 21; People’s Art Theatre, Ashoknagar, ‘Grambasider Matamat’ (at Charghat Jogesh Pathagar), in Parikrama, pp. 28–9; People’s Art Theatre, Ashoknagar, ‘Grambasider Matamat’ (at Ramchandrapur), in Parikrama, p. 47. 61. Sircar admitted this with reference to Spartacus in his book The Third Theatre (p. 59). 62. The other plays were Shana Baurir Kathakata (Shana Bauri’s Recital; play by Bisakha Sircar née Ray, based on Samaresh Basu’s story), Hah Hah Anahar (play by Debasish Chakraborty, based on Mihir Sen’s story), Alpa-Alpo, Dui Bigha Jami (Two Bigha of Land), and Sishuder Raksha Karo (Save the Children) by groups like Satabdi, Arena Theatre Group, Pathasena, and Thakurnagar Sanskritik Parishad.

63. My interview with Dulal Kar on 20 February 2015. 64. My interview with Tapan Banerjee on 15 February 2012. 65. Unpublished interview, Bandyopadhyay, pp. 16–17. 66. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 37. 67. My interview with Badal Sircar in December 2004. 68. See note 16 in this chapter. 69. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 4–5. 70. Sircar, The Third Theatre, pp. 22–3. 71. Quoted by Barker in Hodge (ed.), Twentieth Century Actor Training, p. 114. 72. Quoted by Barker in Hodge (ed.), Twentieth Century Actor Training, p. 115. 73. Robert Leach, Theatre Workshop: Joan Littlewood and the Making of Modern British Theatre (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006), pp. 50, 80. 74. Cited by John Freedman in Alexander Gershkovich, The Theater of Yuri Lyubimov: Art and Politics at the Taganka Theater in Moscow, trans. Michael Yurieff (New York: Paragon House, 1988), p. xiv. 75. Quoted by Jerzy Grotowski in Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford (eds), The Grotowski Sourcebook (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 32. 76. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, pp. 22–3. 77. Richard Schechner, Performance Theory (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2003), p. 130. 78. Schechner, Performance Theory, p. 155. 79. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, p. 21. 80. Schechner, Performance Theory, p. 182. 81. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, p. 26, translation mine. 82. Schechner, Performance Theory, pp. 194–5, 239–40; Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, pp. 30–4. 83. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, p. 30, translation mine. 84. In the chapter titled ‘Actuals’ in Performance Theory, Schechner mentioned what ‘actual’ was. He wrote, ‘Understanding actualizing means understanding both the creative condition and the artwork, the actual’. Again, he wrote, ‘The actualization is the making present of a past time or event’. See Schechner, Performance Theory, pp. 33, 37. 85. Schechner, Performance Theory, p. 46. 86. Schechner, Performance Theory, p. 48. 87. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, pp. 25, 49. 88. Schechner, Performance Theory, pp. 58–9, 84–5. 89. Schechner, Performance Theory, p. xiii. 90. Schechner, Performance Theory, p. ix. 91. Schechner, Performance Theory, p. xiii.

92. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, p. 29. 93. Anne Fliotsos and Wendy Vierow, American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), p. 261. 94. Quoted from Fliotsos and Vierow, American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century, p. 261. 95. Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, p. 14. Nor does he try to transform ‘“spectators”, passive beings in the theatrical phenomenon—into subjects, into actors’, as it was perceived by Augusto Boal in Theater of the Oppressed, trans. Charles A. and MariaOdilia Leal McBride (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985), p. 122. 96. Quoted from Fliotsos and Vierow, American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century, p. 265. 97. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, p. 30, translation mine. 98. Julian Beck, The Life of the Theatre: The Relation of the Artist to the Struggle of the People (New York: Limelight Editions, 1986), p. 59. 99. Beck, The Life of the Theatre, p. 71. 100. Beck, The Life of the Theatre, p. 81. 101. Beck, The Life of the Theatre, p. 82. 102. Beck, The Life of the Theatre, p. 82. 103. Beck, The Life of the Theatre, p. 84. 104. Arvind Korba, ‘Towards Third Theatre’, interview of Badal Sircar, Deccan Chronicle (9 August 1986). 105. Samik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Badal Sircar-er Tritiya Theatre Prasange’, Prama (Calcutta: Natya Shodh Sansthan, n.d.), p. 115, translation mine. The year was not found because of the poor archiving at the Natya Shodh Sansthan. 106. ‘Tritiya Theatre: Badal Sircar-er Gotrantar’, interview of Badal Sircar, Satyajug (5 July 1981). 107. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 76. 108. Sircar, Theatre-er Bhasha, p. 58, translation mine, emphasis mine. 109. Abhijit Kar Gupta, ‘Tritiya Theatre Ebong Badal Sircar’, Chaturanga (April 1987), p. 1000. 110. Angan (June 1987), p. 19. 111. Angan (September 1987), p. 67, emphasis mine. 112. Angan (September 1988), p. 71, emphasis mine. 113. Angan (January 1998), p. 71, emphasis mine. 114. Samik Bandyopadhyay, Theatre-er Jalhaway, eds Sekhar Samaddar and Mili Samaddar (Calcutta: Papyrus, 2007), pp. 120–3. Bandyopadhyay told me the same incidents in one of the interviews. 115. Mahindra, ‘META Lifetime Achievement Awarded to Eminent Theatre Artiste— Badal Sircar’ (8 March 2011), available at http://www.mahindra.com/News/Press-

Releases/1299653068, accessed on 25 April 2015. The award was sent to him in advance as he was not keeping well, as Judith Albuquerque informed me in an e-mail sent on 24 April 2015. 116. Mahindra, ‘Mahindra Builds Three Things: Products, Services, and Possibilities’ (n.d.) available at http://www.mahindra.com/#, accessed on 10 August 2015. 117. My interview with Samik Bandyopadhyay on 11 January 2012. 118. Bharata, ‘Natyavatarn’, in Natyasastra, ed. Suresh Chandra Bandyopadhyay, trans Suresh Chandra Bandyopadhyay and Chanda Chakraborti (Calcutta: Nabapatra Prakashan, 1995 [vol. 4]), chapter 36, p. 248. 119. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 53. 120. Shayoni Mitra, ‘Badal Sircar: Scripting a Movement’, The Drama Review, vol. 48, no. 3 (Autumn 2004), p. 65. 121. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 57. 122. Sircar, The Third Theatre, p. 57. 123. Banerjee, ‘The Third Theatre of Badal Sircar’, p. 111. 124. Hansen, ‘Indian Folk Traditions and the Modern Theatre’, p. 79. 125. Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, p. 132. 126. My interview with Sircar in December 2004. 127. ‘Mukta’ means free, but here it has to be understood as ‘open’. 128. Jindřich Honzl, ‘Dynamics of the Sign in the Theatre’, in George W. Brandt (ed.), Modern Theories of Drama: A Selection of Writings on Drama and Theatre, 1840–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 270. 129. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 27. 130. Sircar, The Changing Language of Theatre, pp. 29–30. 131. Daniel M. Neuman, The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 71–2. 132. Here, baithak means an assembly, a meeting/majlis. From baithak was derived baithak-khana, meaning a drawing room, a parlour/salon/lounge. Similarly, baithaki, the adjectival form, connotes suitable for a drawing-room assembly or party. 133. James Roose-Evans argues that Grotowski is concerned with the spectator who has genuine spiritual needs and who really wishes, through confrontation with the performance, to analyse himself. The very physical proximity of the actors and audience is intended to assist the collective self-analysis to take place. Does this imply a theatre for an elite? The answer is a positive, yes. Grotowski insists that this be made clear from the very beginning: ‘We are not concerned with just any audience but a special one.’ See James Roose-Evans, Experimental Theatre: From Stanislavsky to Today (London: Studio Vista, 1970), p. 64.

134. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, pp. 27, 38. 135. Badal Sircar, Prabaser Hijibiji (Calcutta: Lekhani, 2006), p. 150, translation mine. 136. Baz Kershaw, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 21.

Chapter 7 Things Fall Apart 1. W.B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’, in The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1955), pp. 210–11. However, my primary inspiration for the title of this chapter came from Chinua Achebe’s novel of the same title. 2. My interviews with Manas Das on 17 September 2012 and with Sumit Kumar Biswas on 18 September 2012. Ayna was formed in July 1988, and Pathasena, in July 1979. Being associated with these groups from the first day, Das and Biswas saw Sircar closely and regard him as a person of great vision and integrity. Both claimed that their relationship with the other members of Satabdi had been cordial and constructive. On the other hand, despite working with Satabdi for only three months in 1975, Probir Guha owes to the enriching experience of Sircar’s Third Theatre the development of his own Alternative Living Theatre; he stated clearly in an interview with me on 29 October 2012 that his very theatrical existence would have ceased but for Sircar, whose works, which were an assimilation of honesty, commitment, dedication, and philosophy, influenced him immensely. 3. Badal Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre: Shri Ram Memorial Lectures 1992 (Calcutta: Bit Blits, n.d.), p. 46. 4. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 46. 5. The director of the play was Dipankar Datta. Sircar mentioned him in interviews or in his writings as passing reference. 6. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 47. 7. My interview with Ratna Ghosal on 13 February 2012. 8. My interview with Samik Bandyopadhyay on 4 September 2009. 9. Putul, his first wife, had passed away in 1977. 10. My interview with Bisakha Ray on 6 February 2012. 11. Interview, Ray, 6 February 2012. 12. Interview, Ray, 6 February 2012. 13. Interview, Bandyopadhyay, 4 September 2009. 14. Interview, Ray, 6 February 2012. 15. Interview, Bandyopadhyay, 4 September 2009. 16. My interview with Sandip Saha on 26 February 2012. He said that he never missed a single show for nearly two decades. Once he joined the production even the day after his father’s death. 17. Interview, Ghosal, 13 February 2012. Being a journalist with The Economic Times,

she had to come out early for rehearsals, which affected her future prospects in the job. 18. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 24. 19. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 30, emphasis mine. 20. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 30. 21. Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, p. 33, emphasis mine. 22. Interview, Bandyopadhyay, 11 January 2012. Sircar acknowledged these contributions in the prefaces to Bhoma and Basi Khabar. See Badal Sircar, Bhoma, in Natya Sanchayan (Calcutta: Raktakarabi, 2005), p. 32; Badal Sircar, Basi Khabar, in Natya Sanchayan, p. 74. 23. Interview, Ray, 6 February 2012. Ratna Ghosal added the titles of Churna Prithibi and Janmabhumi Aj. 24. Jean Newlove explained Littlewood and MacColl’s attitude thus in Robert Leach, Theatre Workshop: Joan Littlewood and the Making of Modern British Theatre (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006), pp. 49–50. 25. He went to the extent of implying that the members allowed Sircar’s name to be carried as the author of the plays out of reverence and respect. Interview, Biswas, 18 September 2012. 26. Cited by John Freedman in Alexander Gershkovich, The Theater of Yuri Lyubimov: Art and Politics at the Taganka Theater in Moscow, trans. Michael Yurieff (New York: Paragon House, 1988), p. xii. 27. Cited by Freedman in Gershkovich, The Theater of Yuri Lyubimov, p. xii. 28. Samik Bandyopadhyay, Theatre-er Jalhaway, eds Sekhar Samaddar and Mili Samaddar (Calcutta: Papyrus, 2007), p. 123, translation mine. 29. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2001), p. 296. 30. Philip Auslander, From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism (London and New York, 1997), p. 29. 31. Elaine Aston and George Savona, Theatre as Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 100. 32. Interview, Ghosal, 13 February 2012. 33. Sircar told Samik Bandyopadhyay in an interview: In a rehearsal process, when we start from a scene in a script, it may be we are offering the first suggestion. But the performers and those watching as Satabdi members, may reject it as unworkable. Our actors have this expression—‘I feel like a fool’—which means ‘I’m feeling uncomfortable’, or ‘there’s something wrong with it’, or ‘it’s not coming out?’ Then there are other suggestions that are executed. If there’s too much of discussion, I try to stop it, and say, ‘Fine, let’s try it out.’ We go on trying the alternatives out, till there’s a point at which everyone present agrees it’s clicked. But then we come home, and we make no notes at all, with the constraints under which we operate, our next rehearsal may be

seven days later. And then there’s a controversy, one group claiming, ‘This is how we did it’, and another group protesting, ‘This is how we did it’. We let the discussion run for a while, but then when we find the two or even more groups adamant, every group depending on memory, we stop the discussion, and decide to start from scratch. What happens is that those expressions or movements that we have really liked come back to us, with or without modification. Unpublished interview, Natya Shodh Sansthan, pp. 11–12. 34. Interview, Ghosal, 13 February 2012. Corroborated by Sumit Kumar Biswas (18 September 2012) and Manas Das (17 September 2012). 35. Except in some of the issues of Angan, they cannot be found anywhere; Parikrama was undertaken on Samik Bandyopadhyay’s individual initiative, though the book names Debasish Chakraborty as its publisher on behalf of the eight theatre groups including Satabdi. See Samik Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Parikrama (Calcutta: Debashish Chakraborty, 1986), p. ii. 36. My interview with Arijit Roy on 26 February 2012. 37. Interview, Bandyopadhyay, 11 January 2012. Girishchandra Ghosh was the greatest of the professional actor-managers, but group leaders like Sombhu Mitra, Utpal Dutt, and Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay essentially followed similar practices. 38. Interview, Bandyopadhyay, 11 January 2012. 39. Interview, Bandyopadhyay, 11 January 2012. 40. Interview, Bandyopadhyay, 4 September 2009. He raised questions about Sircar’s commitment as a political member of the CPI as well. 41. Interview, Bandyopadhyay, 11 January 2012. 42. Interview, Ray, 6 February 2012. 43. The only exception was Tapan Banerjee, who only stressed the positive side of his association with Satabdi, and mentioned categorically not to disclose any negative incidents. His tone and attitude clearly suggested that there were many to be divulged. 44. Interview, Ghosal, 13 February 2012. 45. Interview, Ghosal, 13 February 2012. 46. My interview with Kalyan Ghosh on 15 February 2012. He flatly denied me access to interview other members of Satabdi, saying that they had decided to let him speak on their behalf, though I had requested to talk to every one of them. 47. Interview, Saha, 26 February 2012. 48. Year unverified. 49. Interview, Saha, 26 February 2012. 50. Interview, Saha, 26 February 2012. 51. Interview, Roy, 26 February 2012. 52. Interview, Ray, 6 February 2012. 53. Interview, Ray, 6 February 2012.

54. Interview, Ray, 6 February 2012. 55. My interview with Badal Sircar in December 2004. 56. Interview, Saha, 26 February 2012. 57. Leach, Theatre Workshop, p. 110. 58. Interview, Saha, 26 February 2012. 59. Interview, Ghosh, 15 February 2012. 60. Interview, Bandyopadhyay, 11 January 2012.

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———, untitled handwritten essay, Badal Sircar Papers, School of Cultural Texts and Records (Calcutta:Jadavpur University, Calcutta, n.d.). Bandyopadhyay, Samik, interview of Badal Sircar, handwritten (Calcutta: Natya Shodh Sansthan, n.d.), pp. 1–22. Personal Interviews Agrawal, Pratibha (27 January 2009). Basu, Anjali (August 2009). Bandyopadhyay, Samik (26 April 2008). ——— (4 September 2009). ——— (11 January 2012). ——— (19 June 2013). Bandyopadhyay, Sibaji (4 December 2009). Banerjee, Tapan (15 February 2012). Bhattacharya, Lokenath (19 February 2015). Biswas, Sumit Kumar (18 September 2012). Chakraborty, Debasish (21 February 2015). Das, Geeta (9 March 2015). Das, Manas (17 September 2012). Datta, Rita (9 March 2015). Ghosal, Ratna (13 February 2012). Ghosh, Kalyan (15 February 2012). Guha, Probir (29 October 2012). Jana, Smarajit (20 February 2015). Kar, Dulal (20 February 2015). Lal, Ananda (2 September 2012). Mandal, Geeta (9 March 2015). Ray, Bisakha (6 February 2012). Roy, Arijit (26 February 2012). Saha, Sandip (26 February 2012). Sarkar, Pabitra (1 September 2009). Singh, Putul (9 March 2015).

Singh, Pramila (9 March 2015). Sircar, Badal (December 2004).

INDEX Abritta Dashamik (Silhouette) 129 ABTA (All Bengal Teacher’s Association), Calcutta 71, 124–5, 144n14, 209 Abu Hossain (Sircar) 113, 125, 127–8, 130 Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta 127, 131–3, 142–3 actor–audience relationship 128, 208–9, 222–3, 226–7, 233–4, 243n133 actor–director relationship 9, 249, 252–4, 263n37 Adamov, Arthur 95–6 Agricultural Trade Development Assistance Act/Public Law 480 161 Agun (Sircar) 69 Ajoka Theatre 6–8, 134 alternative theatre 6, 10, 145n37, 208, 237; movement in Pakistan 7–8 amateur theatre 5, 24, 62, 69, 209, 250 Amrita Bazar Patrika 30–1, 33–4, 75 Androcles o Singha (Sircar) 177 Angan Theatre Group 133, 147n91, 257 Angan 112, 145n37, 231, 233, 248, 249, 263n35 anganmancha 97–8, 112–13, 126–7, 129–31, 143, 154, 176, 208, 232–6, 258. See also muktamancha; Space Theatre Anti-Fascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association of Bengal 46–7 Arena Theatre Group 146, 181, 241n62 Artaudian Theatre of Cruelty 128 Asiatic Journal, The 25, 51n6 Asiatic society 27 Asquith, Anthony (The Yellow Rolls-Royce) 154, 194n22 August Movement 63 Auslander, Philip 252–3 authoritarianism 163, 252–3, 258 Ayna, theatre group 105, 134, 227–30, 248, 260 Babri Masjid controversy 184 Badias (Bedia) 30–1

Bagalacharitmanas 185 Bagh (Sircar) 73, 76, 80n85, 105. See also Tiger, The (Murray Schisgal) Bagdi 31 Bahurupi 72 baijis (courtesans) 37–8 Bajikar 30–1 Bakhtin, M.M. 88 Baki Itihas (Sircar) 73–5, 80n85, 96, 98, 101, 102, 104–5, 110–11, 123, 250 Ballabhpurer Rupkatha (Sircar) 72–3, 91, 100, 118n68, 118n70, 124, 130, 134. See also Ghost Goes West, The Bandyopadhyay, Ajitesh 166, 197n76, 237, 263n37 Bandyopadhyay, Brajendranath 27, 56n100 Bandyopadhyay, Samik 12–13, 72, 76–7, 92–3, 137, 156, 214–17, 220, 231–2, 242n114, 250–4, 262–3n33, 263n35 Bandyopadhyay, Sibaji 113, 119n78, 210, 220 Bandyopadhyay, Tarashankar (Naginikanyar Kahini) 176 Banerjee, Sumanta xivn2, 9, 188, 193, 212, 233, 239n33 Banerjee, Tapan 218, 233, 249, 257, 263n43 Bangla Congress 157–8 Bannerji, Himani 27, 46, 56n101 Bara Pisima (Sircar) 71–2, 88–9, 90–1, 102, 106, 111 Barba, Eugenio 216, 237n3. See also Barter Theatre Barter Theatre 216 Barthes, Roland 6, 187, 234 Barthian ‘inconclusiveness’ 218, 225 Basi Khabar (Sircar) 174–5, 180, 182, 186, 199n119, 250, 252, 262n22; Santhal movement in 174, 251. See also Money Tower, The (Julian Beck and Living Theatre) Basu, Ajit Narayan (Kanu) 63–5, 68; arrest of 67 Basu, Amritalal, on prostitute-actors 34, 142 Basu, Anjali 72 Battala literature 40 Beck, Julian 126, 211, 219, 224–6, 251 Beckett, Samuel 95–6; Waiting for Godot 95–6 Bengal partition xii, 42, 44 bhadraloks 4, 17, 31, 33–4, 41, 49, 114–15, 189, 215, 217, 225, 236 Bhaduri, Sisir Kumar 43, 47

Bhagavadgita 181 Bhanga Manush (Sircar) 173–4, 252 Bhanumatika Khel (Sircar) 170, 186 Bharat Sanskarak 33, 35 Bharata 143, 232 Bharatiya Janata Party 184 Bharucha, Rustom 11–12, 133–4, 140–1, 188, 214 Bhawai 210–11, 213, 219 Bhoma (Sircar) 7, 11, 14–15, 132–3, 170, 175, 178, 180, 182, 186, 189–91, 193, 213, 215–17, 219, 234, 262n22, 250–2 Bhul Rasta (Sircar) 182, 212 Bibar (Samaresh Basu) 111–12 Bibar (Sircar) 74, 105. See also Bibar (Samaresh Basu) Bibidhartha-Sangraha 28–9 Bichitranushthan (Sircar) 72–3, 76, 102, 106 Bij (Sircar) 154 Bioscope (Sircar) 182, 186 Biplabi Bangla Congress 158 Birinchibaba (Sircar) 69 Biswas, Adrish, interview of Sircar 212 Biswas, Sumit Kumar 248, 261n2, 263n34 Bohurupee, theatre group 13, 72, 73–6, 93 Bolshevik Party of India 157–8 border dispute 90, 161 Bose, Subhas Chandra 44 bourgeois 4, 24–25, 27–28, 47, 50–51, 95–96, 127, 142, 157–160, 166, 196n64, 207 Brecht, Bertolt 6, 19n4, 173. See also Caucasian Chalk Circle, The (Bertolt Brecht) Britto, Father 135, 138, 147n75. See also Clare, Sister Brook, Peter 71, 238n16 Budhan Theatre 15 bureaucracy 160 capitalism 8, 50–1n3, 141, 166, 171, 253 capitalist 6, 100, 159–161, 175, 209, 231, 248 Caucasian Chalk Circle, The (Bertolt Brecht) 173, 219

Chaikin, Joseph 238n16 Chakra 80n85, 102; founded in 71–74, 77, 93; for theatre festival 71. See also Satabdi Chakraborty, Debasish 133, 135, 240–1n62, 263n35 Changing Language of Theatre, The (book by Sircar) 78n4, 96–97, 117n29, 143, 208, 224, 235, 240n48, 240n52 Charuibhati (Sircar) 184. See also Picnic on the Battlefield (Fernando Arrabal) Chatterjea, Ananya 13–14, 20n28 Chatterjee, Partha 159, 164, 195n31 Chattopadhyay, Himangsu 74 Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra 26 Chhara, Dakxin Bajrange 14–15 Chhou 210, 219 Chouhan, Shivraj Singh 184 Churna Prithibi (Sircar) 182, 202n181 Cinderella (Sircar) 62, 69 Circus (Sircar) 112–113 Clare, Sister 135, 138, 147n75. See also Britto, Father collectiveness, sense of 3, 45, 102, 126, 130, 133, 172, 188, 192, 214, 220, 225, 247, 251–3, 255 collectivity/communality 141 colonial/colonialism/(post)coloniality 62, 140–1, 145n37, 156, 159, 161, 163, 166, 171, 184, 211, 213, 236 commercial: public theatre 24; stage during Second World War 44 commercialism 42, 113 communal riot 44. See also Great Calcutta Killings communism 4, 47, 172 Communist movement 105, 112, 151, 153, 163, 186 Communist Party of India 4, 28, 46–48, 49–50, 61, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 153, 157–8, 162–4, 172, 196n62, 196–7n64, 263n40; arresting workers of 66; crises within 49; merger with Labour Party 63 Communist Party of India (Marxist) 153, 157, 158, 163, 172, 197n65 Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) 164 Condemned of Altona, The (Sartre) 110 Congress Sahitya Sangha (Bengal) 49 Criminal Tribes Act (1911) 31

cultural practices 17, 41, 46. See also folk, culture dacoits 31 Das, Kasiram 26 Dass, Veena Noble 112 Datta, Dipankar 257, 261n5 Datta, Prabir, death of 132 Dear Brutus (J.M. Barrie) 76, 105 Derrida, Jacques 252–3 Dramatic Performances Act (1876) 3, 35, 42; Congress invoking of 49 Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee xiii, 141–2 Dutt, Utpal 27, 51n12, 236–7n2, 263n37 Dutta, Michael Madhusudan xii, 33 Dwairath (Sircar) 178, 181. See also Tango Palace (María Irene Fornés) Ebong Indrajit (Sircar) 3, 72–73, 76, 91–98, 100–2, 104–5, 110–111, 115, 123, 125, 129, 134, 137, 175, 186, 192, 250; performance by Shouvanik 73 economic liberalization (1991) 183 Economic and Political Weekly 110 Ekti Hatyar Natyakatha (Sircar) 176, 187. See also Marat/Sade (Peter Weiss) Emergency (President’s Rule) 90, 132–3, 157–9, 165. See also Gandhi, Indira Engels, Friedrich 27–28. See also Marx, Karl English education 17, 27–28, 34 English play-houses of Calcutta 27 Entally Novice Artistes’ Cultural Association 69 Environmental Theatre, of Richard Schechner 125, 219, 226 Esslin, Martin (Theatre of the Absurd) 92 fakirs 31 fascism 45–46, 158 feudalism 100, 166, 236 folk: culture 3, 24, 40, 141, 214; dance 134; elements 5, 8–9, 212; literature 47, 77; performances 46, 77, 135; performers 46–47; plays 209; techniques 135; theatre 10, 208, 211–214, 216; traditions 24, 136, 141, 193, 208, 212 folklore 41, 50 Forbes 183 Formula for Death: E=mc2 (Fernand Gigon) 110

Forward Bloc 157–8 Forward Bloc (Marxist) 153, 157–8 Foucault, Michel 91, 178, 181, 200n141 free theatre 131, 225–6, 233, 235; Beck on 225; of Bharata 232; as freedom from money 131; of Malina and Beck 225 Freedman, John 252 Gajadananda o Jubaraj, obscenity in 35 Gandhi, Indira 159, 165, 199n117. See also Emergency (President’s Rule) Gandi (Sircar) 173, 193, 249–250. See also Caucasian Chalk Circle, The (Bertolt Brecht) Gauhar, Madeeha 6, 8, 134 Gauriya Vaishnavism 26 Ghosal, Ratna 249, 254–6, 262n23 Ghosh, Charu Prakash 48 Ghosh, Girishchandra 27, 35, 62, 113, 263n37 Ghosh, Gourkishore 113, 153 Ghosh, Kalyan 10, 256, 263n46 Ghosh, Prafulla Chandra 157 Ghosh, Rhitodeep 16 Gillitt, Cobina 126, 219 Gitabhinay 29–30, 34, 52n26, 52n28 goondas 31 gram parikrama 133, 216 Great Calcutta Killings 44. See also communal riot Grotowski, Jerzy 124, 126, 211, 219, 221, 226, 232, 236, 243–4n133 Gupta, Abhijit Kar 231 gypsies 30–31 Habib, Irfan 171 Hah Hah Anahar (Debasish Chakraborty) 214–215, 240n62 Half-Akhrai 28 Hallet, M.G. 45 Hansen, Kathryn 17–18, 214 Harijan, killing of 174 Hattamalar Deshey (novel by Premendra Mitra and Leela Majumdar) 171–2 Hattamalar Opare (Sircar) 91, 171–3, 182, 193, 218, 250

herders 31 Hindoo Patriot, The 29, 33 Hindu: discourse 42; mela 42; and Muslim dichotomy 37, 39, 44; mythology 42; revivalism 42 Hindu National Theatre 32 Hindustan Times 75 human body, use of in theatre 12, 173, 224, 233–4 I Dream of Jeannie 185 imperialism 45, 158 Indian National Congress 50, 131, 157–9, 184 Indian National Theatre (Bombay) 49 Indian National Trade Union Congress 50 Indian Penal Code, imposition of Section 144 of 131 Indian People’s Theatre Association 3–4, 41, 45–49, 214–215 Indian Progressive Writers’ Association 45 Indo-China War 161 innovations 9, 40, 260. See also creativity Jadi Ar Ekbar (Sircar) 73, 76, 105, 111. See also Dear Brutus (J.M. Barrie) Jaloos 6–8 Jana, Smarajit 142 Janata Dal 159 Janmabhumi Aj (Birendra Chattopadhyay, Manibhushan Bhattacharya, and Sircar) 181, 186 Jari 124 Jatra 25–31, 33, 38–40, 210–211, 213, 219 Jatrawallas 26, 40 Joseph, Stephen 209–210 Joshi, Puran Chand 47–48, 65–66, 196n62 Jugis 31 Ka Cha Ta Ta Pa (Sircar) 182, 184–6, 256. See also Bagalacharitmanas; I Dream of Jeannie Kabigan 26, 28, 30, 39–40, 212 Kabi-kahini (Sircar) 72–73, 76, 101 Kabi-singers 39

Kanhailal, Heisnam 137, 217 Kans 31; as Kinnars 31 Kanu. See Basu, Ajit Narayan (Kanu) Kar, Dulal 214, 218, 233 Kathakali 136, 210, 219 Kerim Friedman, P. 14–15 Khat Mat Kring (Sircar) 178, 186, 218, 260. See also Oh, What a Lovely War! (Joan Littlewood) Kirtan 33, 212 Kishore, Nand 136 Kishore, Shweta 14 Kohli, Atul 160–1 Komal Gandhar 141–2 Lakshmichharar Panchali (Sircar) 165, 171, 193, 212, 218 Lal, Ananda 43, 128, 233 Lebedeff, Gerasim, casting women actors 33 Left extremism 164 Leontiev, A. (Political Economy) 64 Licence Raj 183 Littlewood, Joan 70, 178, 212, 219–221; Theatre Workshop of 70, 136, 220–1, 258–9 Living Theatre 126, 174, 224, 226, 251 Lyubimov, Yuri 124, 219, 221, 252 MacIntosh, Joan 125 Maddhyastha 30, 34, 52–3n32 Mahabharata 26, 177 Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards 231 Maintenance of Internal Security Act 1971 174, 199n117 Maitra, Parag 257 Majumdar, Leela 172 Mal 31 Malina, Judith 126, 172, 193, 211, 219, 224–6, 251 Malla, Asesh, of Sarwanam Theatre 8 Mangal Kavya 26 Mani-Kanchan (Sircar) 174, 187 Manifesto of the Communist Party 28. See also Engels, Friedrich; Marx, Karl

Manipuri Jatra 134, 211 Manushey Manushey (Sircar) 176–7, 252 Marat/Sade (Peter Weiss) 176, 187 Marx, Karl 27–28; Marxism 61, 114. See also Engels, Friedrich Marxist cultural movement 46 Mazumdar, Charu 164 McDonnell, Bill 138–140 Memorandum (Sircar) 176, 186 META Lifetime Achievement Award xi, 231 Michhil (Sircar) 6, 8, 131–3, 155–6, 164–5, 186, 188, 193, 249–250, 252 middle-class 42, 46, 48, 62–64, 77, 85, 87, 90, 102, 114–115, 167, 169–170, 189–191, 225 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (William Shakespeare) 87 Mitra, Manoj 49 Mitra, Premendra 166, 171–2 Mitra, Rajendralal in Bibidhartha-Sangraha 27–28 Mitra, Sombhu 48, 72, 74–75. See also Bahurupi; Bohurupee Mitra, Tripti 75 modern Bengali theatre 3, 17, 25, 41–42, 49 Modi, Narendra 183–4 Money Tower, The (Julian Beck and Living Theatre) 251–2 Mukherjee, Ajay 157–8 Mukhopadhyay, Tapas 138 muktamancha 232, 234–5 Muktamela (Sircar) 130–1 Muslim League 158 Nabanna, production by Sombhu Mitra 48 Nabaprabandha 25, 30 Nadite Dubiye Dao (Sircar) 176, 193, 227. See also We Come to the River (Edward Bond) Naginikanya (Sircar) 176–7, 187. See also Bandyopadhyay, Tarashankar (Naginikanyar Kahini) Naithani, Sadhana 46 Narmada Bachao Andolan 183–4 Naskar, Prabir 257 Nat 30–31

National Book Trust 49 National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector 183, 201n172 National Crime Records Bureau 183 National Film Society 70 National Theatre 32, 38 nationalism/nationalist 46, 159–161 Natya Shodh Sansthan 11, 21 Natyakarer Sandhane Tinti Charitra (Sircar) 166, 170, 186, 193. See also Six Characters in Search of an Actor (Luigi Pirandello) 166 Nautanki 210–211, 219 Naxalbari movement 249 Naxalism 131, 157–8 Nayan Kabirer Pala, performance by Nakshatra 130 Nehru, Jawaharlal 160–2 Next Time I’ll Sing to You (James Saunders) 106 Nidhiramer Rajya (Sircar) 170, 186 O’Donnell, Erin 215 Oh, What a Lovely War! (Joan Littlewood) 70, 178 Ojha, Krittibas 26 Ore Bihanga (Sircar) 184–5, 191 Padma Bhushan, decline of (2010) 232 Padma Shri (1972) 232 Padmanadir Majhi (Sircar) 176–7, 187. See also Padmanadir Majhi (Manik Bandyopadhyay) 175–6 Pagla Ghora (Sircar) 74–76, 105, 111 Palme Dutt, R. 171 Panchali 26, 28, 30, 40, 212; singers 40 Pandavani 182, 212 Pare Konodin (Sircar) 73, 106–110, 250. See also Next Time I’ll Sing to You (James Saunders) Parikrama 146n64, 214, 216–7, 219, 263n35 pastoralists 31 Pathasena, theatre group 134, 146n64, 181, 218, 227–9, 241n62, 248, 260, 261n2

Patnaik, Prabhat 160–1, 171 patronage of Bengali literature 38–39 Pearl Harbour, attack on 64 People’s Art Theatre, Ashoknagar 146n64, 215 People’s United Left Front 157 people’s war 65 performance space 14, 17, 56n101, 112, 124, 127, 154, 171, 216–7, 227, 232, 235, 249, 253, 255–7 Performance Theory (Richard Schechner) 222–3, 241n41 performers 15, 17, 25, 30, 43, 47, 49, 69, 113, 125–130, 132, 209–210, 217, 224, 226; entertainment by 41; social standards of 34 Picnic on the Battlefield (Fernando Arrabal) 184 Poor Theatre, of Jerry Grotowski 124, 219, 221, 226 popular culture 17–18, 25, 29, 35, 47; marginalization of indigenous 40 Prabaser Hijibiji (book by Sircar) 61, 71, 94, 96, 100, 123 Pralap (Sircar) 73–75, 77, 106, 110, 124. See also Next Time I’ll Sing to You (James Saunders) Prastab (Sircar) 130, 133, 172, 232, 250 Progressive Writers’ Association 41, 45, 47 proscenium 3–5, 9, 13, 17, 23–25, 27, 32, 34, 41–42, 50, 97, 114–115, 124–5, 207–9, 211, 254; plays 85, 114–115, 124, 193; theatre 3, 5, 24, 27, 32, 50, 62, 187, 223, 232, 254 prostitutes 30, 32–34, 64, 111, 142; casting of 33; The Hindoo Patriot on 33 private theatre 24, 28, 56n100, 127, 233 public theatre 24, 28, 32, 42–44 Purano Kasundi (book by Sircar) 86, 123 Quit India Movement 63 Raha, Kironmoy 20n34, 75 rajas 24, 38 Ram Shyam Jadu (Sircar) 72–73, 80n78, 90. See also We’re No Angels Ranadive, Bhalchandra Trimbak 48, 65–66, 196n62 Rangabelia 132, 139–142 Rao, P.V. Narasimha 183 Ray, Bisakha 249–251, 255–6, 258 refugee crisis 44, 85–86

religious fundamentalism 178, 183 Revolutionary Communist Party of India 157–8 Revolutionary Socialist Party 153, 157 Ritam Theatre 133, 257 Roy, Arijit 249, 253 Roy, Dwijendra Lal 62 Rupkathar Kelenkari (Sircar) 165–6, 193 Sada Kalo (Sircar) 181–2, 218, 248. See also Woza Albert! (Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema, and Barney Simon) sadhus 31 Sagina Mahato (Sircar) 112–113, 124–5, 129–130, 151, 186, 188, 193 Saha, Barin 66, 69; arrest of 67 Saha, Sandip 249, 256–7, 259 Samabritta (Sircar) 72, 91. See also Scapegoat, The Sambad Prabhakar 29 Sambandha-Samadhi Natak, distaste of Vedic rituals in 26 Samyukt Socialist Party 157 Sandesh 172 Sangeet Natak Akademi 49 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award 76 Sangeet Natak Akademi Ratna Puraskar 232 Sanibar (Sircar) 71, 89–90. See also Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The (James Thurber) sannyasis 31 Sanskrit plays 24, 26, 42; divisions of 26 Santhals, killing of 174 Santiniketan 43; Tagore producing plays at 43 Sanyal, Kanu 164 Sararattir (Sircar) 72–73, 98, 100, 105, 111, 124, 192; translated into English 72 Sardar Sarovar Dam 183 Sartre, Jean-Paul 94–96, 110 Satabdi, Sircar’s theatre group 9–12, 15–16, 74, 76–77, 98, 105, 113, 123–4, 126–133, 173–7, 220–1, 227–231, 233–4, 247–9, 252–8, 260; closed 76. See also Satak, theatre group within Satabdi Satak, theatre group within Satabdi 257

Sathyamurthy, T.V. 162–3 Scapegoat, The 91 Schechner, Richard 125–6, 128, 136–7, 211, 214, 219, 222–3, 226; Performance Group of 223; Performance Theory 222–3 Second World War 44, 46, 221 Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The (James Thurber) 89 Sen, Dinesh Chandra 38–39 Sen, Keshub Chunder 37 Sen, Sukumar 27, 29 Serchio, Anthony, meeting with Sircar 126 Sesh Nei (Sircar) 112, 124, 134, 146n67, 186. See also Trial, The (Franz Kafka) sexual jokes 40 sexuality 38, 152, 226; interpretation of 39 Shana Baurir Kathakata (Bisakha Ray) 240n62 Shaw, George Bernard, liking for 63, 173, 177 Shouvanik, theatre group 98, 125; performance of Ebong Indrajit 73 Sikdar, Taracharan 26; Bhadrarjun 26 Silhouette, theatre group 125, 128–9, 131; performance of Mukti Ashram 145n37 Singh, Manmohan 183, 201n172 Sinri (Sircar) 180–1, 193 Sircar, Badal: adaptation 15, 87, 113–114, 151, 154, 166, 173, 176–7, 184, 186–7, 207; as apprentice engineer 65; an atheist 64; authorial intervention 41, 88, 89, 90, 101–2, 141; Bengal Engineering College in 63; childhood and schooling of 62–65; contradictions of 6, 9, 77, 96, 114, 127, 142, 173, 190, 227, 232–4, 259; criticism of the Left 67, 153, 163; Maithon, days in 69, 71–72, 88; entry into theatre 41; in France 72–74; honesty of 208, 214, 232, 261n2; influence of foreign films/plays 86–87, 70–73, 94, 128, 154, 166, 181–2; job at Calcutta Municipal Corporation 69, 71; job at Jadavpur Engineering College 68; in London 4, 70–72; member of Calcutta Central Strike Committee 66; in Nigeria 73–74, 106, 111; nuclear criticism 110, 111, 114–5, 180, 183–4; quitting CPI 68; rail strike 66–67; suicide attempt of 256; utopia 8, 165, 172–3, 193; workshop 5, 8–9, 13, 125, 134–142, 154, 173–4, 181, 214, 251–3; working for the DVC 69, 71 Sircar, Badal, awards of. See individual awards Sircar, Badal, books by. See individual books

Sircar, Badal, plays by. See individual plays Six Characters in Search of an Actor (Luigi Pirandello) 166 Smith, Horatio 31–32, 37 socialism/socialist 47, 48, 160, 164, 177, 195n36, 196n62 Socialist Unity Centre of India 157 Solution X (Sircar) 69, 71–72, 85–87, 91, 102, 186; in Khapchhara 85. See also Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (William Shakespeare) Sonagachi, sex workers of xiii, 5, 141–2 Space Theatre 126 Spartacus (Sircar) 125, 127–9, 133, 153–4, 164, 171, 186, 193, 218, 233–4, 250 Srampickal, Jacob 135–7 Statesman, The 75–76 Stree Mukti Shanghatana Cultural Troupe 14 street theatre 14–15, 135; workshop on 135 Suitcase (Sircar) 154, 187. See also Asquith, Anthony (The Yellow RollsRoyce) Sukhapathya Bharater Itihas (Sircar) 171 Sundarban 132, 140, 154, 173 Surendranath Park 128–9, 131–3, 145n37, 234, 256 Swadeshi Movement 42, 55n83 Taganka Theatre 124, 221 Tagore, Jyotirindranath, plays of 42 Tagore, Rabindranath 38, 43, 123, 209–210; ‘Rangamancha’ 43, 210; ‘Tapati’ 210 Tamasha 210, 213, 219 Tango Palace (María Irene Fornés) 178 Tarja 28, 212 Teesri Duniya Theatre, theatre group 8 Telangana movement 161, 196n63 Thana Theke Aschi, performance by Chakra 71–72 Theatre of the Absurd 92, 95–96 theatre movement in Pakistan 8 theatre in the round 70, 72, 97, 118n68, 126, 208–211 Theatre-er Bhasha (book by Sircar) 3, 208, 213, 222–3, 234 theatrical: productions 45; purity 46; selectiveness 29 Third Theatre 5–11, 13–18, 77, 112–113, 123–4, 127–130, 134–6, 161, 185,

193, 207–8, 210–211, 213–217, 219–220, 224–6, 231–5, 247–250, 252–5, 260 Third Theatre, The (book by Sircar) 123–4, 129, 134, 136, 208, 210, 219, 226, 234, 247 thugs 31 ticketing system 24; abolition of 127 Tiger, The (Murray Schisgal) 105 Town Planning (Thomas Sharp) 68 Trial, The (Franz Kafka) 112 Tringsa Satabdi (Sircar) 73, 75, 108, 110–112, 115, 131, 133, 250. See also Condemned of Altona, The (Sartre); Formula for Death: E=mc2 (Fernand Gigon) Trowsdale, Jo 11, 138–140 Udyogparva (Sircar) 177–8 United Left Front 157–8, 164 urban sophistication, breaking of 137 Vaishnava Padavali 26 Venkata Reddy, K. 175 Vidya-Sundar, criticism of 32, 38 Voyages in the Theatre (book by Sircar) 13, 143, 174, 175–7, 187, 208, 234, 248, 251 vulgarity 38. See also sexual jokes We Come to the River (Edward Bond) 176 We’re No Angels 90 Western dramaturgy 9, 42 Western theatre 5, 10, 24, 210, 214, 225, 260 women, casting of 33. See also under prostitutes Workers’ Party of India 157–8 Woza Albert! (Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema, and Barney Simon) 181 Youth Cultural Institute 46 zamindari system, abolition of 161 zamindars 24, 100, 169 Zia-ul-Haq 6

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Manujendra Kundu holds a PhD from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He is a student of various literary traditions, including Bengali, English, Sanskrit, Comparative Literature, Performance Studies, and History. A journalist by profession, his interests span a number of areas such as performance studies, politico-cultural movements in post-Independence India, the relationship between popular culture and media in colonial and postcolonial India, the news industry, and the study of Brahmans against the politico-economic construction in Indian religion. But what enthrals him the most is the contradiction of intellectual and intelligential incisiveness. At present, he is engaged in uncovering the inconsistencies in some of the most important thinkers of India and the West whose ideas continue to influence and guide academia around the world. Were there deliberate contradictions in them? That is the question he is in pursuit of.