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    The Farcical Mosaic:The Changing Masks of PoliticalTheatre in Contemporary IndiaDarren C. Zook

    Political theatre has often relied upon farce and satire to make a veiled but effective cri-tique of political trends. In contemporary India, however, political theatre is facing anew challenge in trying to find ways to out-farce a political arena that already hasbecome inherently farcical. There are two special challenges addressed here. The firstcomes from the state of Kerala in southwestern India, where a self-styled progressive stategovernment in the hands of the Communist Party has come under attack by critical play-wrights for ossifying into orthodoxy and complacency. The second challenge centers on

    the difficulties faced by playwrights who have turned toward so-called indigenous orfolk models of theatre to voice their critiques. Since the national government in Delhihas tried to utilize the symbols of an invented indigenous past to establish its legitimacy,critical theatre often finds itself applauded and even co-opted by the very political forcesagainst which it has directed its dissent. This article examines the difficulties of estab-lishing a pure space for political theatre in contemporary India and offers as a con-clusion a possible path toward resolution.

    Darren C. Zook teaches the history and politics of South Asia at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley.

    In her rich and moving memoir of India from partition in 1947to the present, Qamar Azad Hashmi, mother of slain theatre-activistSafdar Hashmi, lamented the tendency of revolutionary and politicallyactive artists, particularly those on the left, to allow themselves to beco-opted into the central areas of power against which they onceresisted. During the freedom struggle, she notes:

    Those who were poets and writers directed all of their anger againstforeign [British] rule in their verses and songs; others orchestratedtheir resistance in the newspapers and articles; scientific and literary

    Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 18, no. 2 (Fall 2001). 2001 by University of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved.

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    societies were founded to bring the common people and the artiststogether in one place; the suffering of the people was articulatedthrough the theatre and forcefully made known to the people; those

    who participated in the struggle and those who were their leadersbefore partition they used this entire array of means. [But] severalmembers of the left-wing groups who had participated in the freedomstruggle and who had spent time in British jailsafter India becamefree, they accepted copper plaques and became the right hand of theruling establishment, and thus in accepting payment for theirsacrifices they became of one and the same color as the government.[Hashmi 1995, 16]

    The leaders of the freedom struggle, it seems, began to settle

    quickly and comfortably into chairs still warm from the recentlydeparted British officials. Those who had only moments before con-sidered themselves freedom fighters and revolutionaries began to ossifyinto a new establishment that to those outside the corridors of powerbegan to look disturbingly similar to the old order against which theyhad struggled. Safdar Hashmi, left-wing activist and leader of the streettheatre group Jana Natya Manch, knew well the power of theatre tomake a political statement and also the lengths to which a governmentwould go to quell the threat of dissension. Many times his street dra-mas had been broken up by government thugs and his actors beaten

    and chased off. It was in one such tussle, on January 1, 1989, that Saf-dar Hashmi, defending the actors in his troop, was fatally wounded atthe hands of a mob attack allegedly orchestrated by the ruling Con-gress Party.1

    Although Safdar Hashmis home theatre, so to speak, was thecity of Delhi and its environs, the street theatre tradition of which hewas a vociferous advocate is by no means confined to the capital citybut extends into other regions and other cities of South Asia as well.2By and large, political theatre in South Asia tends to draw its inspira-tion from ideological sources that are opposed to the centerpri-marily, but not necessarily, from the political left. In most of SouthAsia, as elsewhere, the political left is identified with Marxist-Leninistparties of one sort or other, and the rhetoric of their manifestos, likethe dialogue of their plays, is replete with calls for continuing the rev-olution. Theoretically the revolution is the event in which the out-sider partythe leftist partytakes power on behalf of the commonpeople and political and social justice is finally served. While QamarAzad Hashmis polemic is directed at those of the political left whohave left their revolutionary perches for the comfy confines of the cen-

    tral political establishment (the supposed antithesis of the people),in other parts of South Asia the embarrassment of revolutionary riches

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    has posed a different sort of challenge for the theatre activist: whathappens to political theatre when the revolution becomes the state?

    Here I want to focus on the increasingly convoluted ways inwhich this question has been addressed in contemporary India. Thegeneral trends of political theatre in India are examined here withparticular emphasis on a recent critical and controversial drama thatsatirizes the ruling Communist Party in one revolutionary state insouthwestern Indiathe state of Kerala. Civic Chandrans Ninnal AareKammunistaaki(Whom Did You Make a Communist?; 1995) indicatesthe direction toward which political or revolutionary theatre has beenpushed both in India and elsewhere in South Asia. Political practiceand rhetoric have become so comical and absurd that left-wing, social-

    ist, and realist dramas, if they are true to their task of representingthe revolution as it is, must unwittingly and perhaps unwillingly tendtoward a theatre of revolutionary farce (or farcical revolution)or,indeed, a theatre in which farce and realism are indistinguishable. Theossification of the revolutionary state in Kerala is paralleled through-out India by the pervasive sense of decaying nationalism out of whichhas emergedto make things worsea retreat to fundamentalist andculturally chauvinist governments (such as the Bharatiya Janata Partyand the Shiv Sena). The primary weapon that such governments haveused to counteract this decay is to appeal nostalgically to a supposedly

    indigenous but largely nonexistent, or at least misrepresented,Golden Age of the Hindu past. Political theatre in India, as in Kerala,has consequently become boxed in on two fronts. On one side it isboxed in by circumstance: there is the discomfiting similarity betweenthe British and the Indian National Congress and between the centrist(Congress) and revolutionary or fundamentalist governments. Onthe other side it is boxed in by rhetoric: how can one evoke a peoplestheatre when everyone claims to speak for the people? As a result,political theatre has tended increasingly toward cynical satire and aninvoluted form of irony that is held together by absurd rhetoric made

    meaningful only by its absurd political context.At the national level, then, political theatre finds itself in com-

    petition with an equally theatrical and dramatic state, one increasinglyinfluenced by fundamentalist, or at least militantly nationalistic, forces.At the state level and here Kerala will serve as the prime exampleinstead of revolutionary slogans, impassioned rhetoric, and socialistrealism, political theatre has collapsed in on itself through the pon-derous weight of its own ideological shortcomings in the face of a verydifferent and less inspiring social reality. The result in each case is an

    incestuous lexicon of self-reverence and self-reference that rendersthe idea of political theatre almost meaningless but at the same time

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    suggests that abandoning the theatre would be to succumb to compla-cency and complicity. What, then, is a revolutionary playwright to do?

    Situating Political Theatre in India: Kerala and BeyondIt is in some ways a misnomer to refer to leftist theatre as polit-

    ical theatre because in some sense all theatre is politicaljust in dif-ferent ways. Even in so-called traditional forms of theatre in India,cloaked as they often are in the wholesome terms of preserving the val-ues of the past, it is not too difficult to discern a political agenda ofcosmic proportions that makes one wonder just how wholesome suchtraditional values really are.3 Although modern theatre in Kerala andelsewhere in India is often contrasted to traditional theatre, the polit-

    ical continuity between them seriously weakens this historical and con-ceptual divide. Indeed, as we shall see, part of the absurdity confront-ing political theatre in Kerala stems from the urge to draw similarlyartificial distinctionsbetween political ideologies or cultural prac-tices, for instancein places where such distinctions have no basis(whether in the theatre or in reality).

    We can see this in concrete form if we examine the parallelemergence of new ideas in theatre and new ideas in politics startingroughly from the 1870s: political theatre as it exists today in Kerala isin large part an offspring of both. In terms of theatre we begin in 1872,

    not in Kerala but in Bengal, with the opening of the National Theatrein Calcutta and the staging of Dinabandhu Mitras polemical Bengali-language play Nil Darpan(The Blue Mirror). Mitras play, which high-lights the exploitation of agricultural laborers in eastern India byBritish indigo planters, was initially both a commercial successit wasthe first play in India to sell tickets to the public in a nondiscrimina-tory manner (by caste or class)and a political disaster. Critical reac-tions were mixed: some praised its novelty and forcefulness; othersthought it sacrificed literary merit for political sensation and resentedits overtly political European style.4 Moreover, in terms of artistic cre-

    ativity, the staging of the play had a profound (and, some might say,deleterious) effect in influencing the direction of political theatre.According to Farley Richmond, the oppressive atmosphere created inthe aftermath of the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876a piece ofcensorial legislation issued in part as a response to Mitras play anddesigned to mute the critical power of theatrical performancepushed theatre in a new political direction. In the aftermath of the act,he notes,

    political and social protest was forced underground and Indian pro-ducers had to pass it off under the thinly veiled guise of historical and

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    engaged in the very same issues. At least from the 1920s, for instance,political parties, caste communities, and royal patrons began to mobi-lize around crucial and contested issues of social reform such as templeentry for untouchables, public health, education, caste prejudice, andthe status of women, to name just a few (Menon 1994). The politicalbattles revealed several fault lines in the political terrain of Keralaestablished royal rulers versus new politicians; nationalists (Congress)versus communists; low caste versus high casteand while politicalviolence was certainly part of the drama of the period, the rhetoricalside of the debate brought new modes of expression and linguisticarguments about the status of Malayalam to the political forefront.This was an era of the mass and rapid circulation of words, and outlets

    such as street theatre and political pamphlets flourished in this atmos-phere. Persons, words, and ideas quickly became muddled in what wasin fact a very rich political stew, and by the 1940s every major politicalgroup in southwestern Indiathe British, the maharajas, the untouch-ables, the Congress, and the communists, among otherswere allworking on what was in essence the same political program of reform.The only thing that was radical was the rhetoric used by each to claimthis program as its own.

    By the time we get to the decades straddling independence, the1940s and 1950s, the methods of popularizing and claiming ideas had

    become much more sophisticated than cheaply printed street plays andpamphletsand the political stakes in doing so much higher. Thedevelopment state that would become Kerala was beginning to takeshape, although who built it and who owned it remained unsettled.Much of the debate took place through the social drama of the periodand also through carefully orchestrated political theatre. While theCongress Party was trying to wrest the claim of self-rule and national-ism out of the hands of British and traditional (princely) rulers, theCommunist Party was busy staging secular and radical processions inwhich deities were replaced with hammer and sickle flags. Symbols

    were being continuously made and remade, and histories written andrewritten, by all parties. Ideologically it was a volatile environment,and at times this volatility manifested itself in armed clashes and tus-sles between competing groups. Wartime food shortages only exacer-bated the general sense of tension and unrest. Words of revolutionhung in the air. Other words were in the air as wellthe words ofpolitically active playwrights vying for politically loyal audiences. Outof this political and dramatic mayhem, one voice was to resonateclearly and suddenly, a voice that would literally change the course of

    Keralas political and theatrical history: the voice of Thoppil Bhasi.

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    The Making of Thoppil Bhasi

    To understand the concerns addressed in Civic Chandrans play,

    it is first necessary to examine briefly the life and work of ThoppilBhasiin particular the play from which Chandran draws for his farceand which made Bhasi so extraordinarily famous in Keralas modernpolitical and theatrical history: Ninnal Enne Kammunistaaki(You MadeMe a Communist) (Bhasi 1976). Bhasi wrote this play while in hidingthe new Congress government effectively banned the CommunistParty when it came to power in 1947and the spirit of the play isdrawn from the drama of the attempted Communist uprising at Sur-nad (in present-day Kerala) in 1949 in which five policemen werekilled, an event that is also central to his last play, Olivile Ormmakal

    (Memories in Hiding).6 The former play was written in 1952; to give itpopular appeal, songs were added by O. N. V. Kurup, in whose houseBhasi had taken shelter. After its initial performance, the Congressgovernment responded first by breaking up performances and chasingactors out of town and then by banning performances altogetheradepressing dress rehearsal for the later action against Safdar Hashmi.But the plays popular appeal proved too great for the censors, and itbecame one of those works of art that appeared in the right place atexactly the right moment, capturing and creating the spirit of an eraat the same time. Indeed, it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that

    the popularity of the communists, which allowed them to capture statepower in the elections of 1957, stemmed largely from the popularityof Bhasis play and its songs.

    The plot of the play is part political propaganda, part melo-drama, though the former is strangely muted in a play that is primar-ily a political statement. Kesavan Nayar, a capitalist landlord who is ashungry for more land as he is for sexual trysts with the young womenof the village, wants to take the land of a certain Paramu Pillai, fatherof Communist Party member and worker Gopalan. Gopalan is in love

    with Sumam, the daughter of Kesavan Nayar, and Kesavan Nayar lustsafter Mala, a beautiful young girl of the Pulaya (low-caste) community,whom he intends to seduce and dishonor. Although Mala is in love withGopalan, that love remains unrequited. Kesavan Nayar produces falsi-fied papers to gain title to Paramu Pillais lands. With no other possi-ble recourseKesavan Nayar is connected to the Congress Party andis in fact trying to marry off Sumam to a Congress Party supporterParamu Pillai turns to the communists for help. Through agitations,demonstrations, and processions, the communists ultimately galvanizeenough popular support to gain concessions from big landlords such

    as Kesavan Nayar to protect the small landowners and tenants. Gopalanand Sumam promise to marry one another, and Mala fades to a

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    pathetic demise and eventual death (which becomes significant inCivic Chandrans play). The play ends with Paramu Pillai proclaimingto the young communists who fought on his behalf You have mademe a communist! and demanding to carry the red flag of the revolu-tion as the communists march off into the revolutionary-red sunset.

    Despite the plays popularity, not everyone in Kerala was aCommunist. Indeed, opposition to the play and its simplistic story wasvoiced in other plays that became increasingly farcical. In 1953, KesavaDev wrote a play titled Nanippo Kammunistavum!(Now I Will Becomea Communist!), a satirical response to Bhasis play. In Kesava Devsplay, characters threaten to join the Communist Party for the slightestinsult or incidentin one case for dropping a teacup. The play is not

    without a serious message, however. Along with the rest of Kesava Devsfarces and plays, it constitutes a warning against the type of politickingdescribed earlier: the claim and counterclaim to the spoils of politicalvictory, for example, or the rush to outdo the other parties in makingincreasingly outrageous claims as to the ownership of various agendasfor action. When Dev parodies one of the landlords who becomes acommunist in order to evict his tenants in Nanippo Kammunistavum!,he is foreshadowing some of the criticisms that appear in Civic Chan-drans play. From the perspective of the people, revolutionary andreactionary groups began to look and sound remarkably the same.

    Thoppil Bhasi began to see the emptiness of political rhetoric,and in later years he began to write articles and plays that criticizedCommunist Party rulers and functionaries for betraying the revolu-tion.7 He even stated publicly that he regretted the violence of the Sur-nad uprising. His other plays continue to reveal a deep concern forsocial issues, and one of his best plays, Asvameetam(The Horse Sacri-fice), published in 1962, deals with leprosy, then little discussed, andthe issue of untouchability and outcasting. It is of some interest tonote thatThe Horse Sacrificewould not have had such an impact were itnot for the long history of interest in issues of public health, hygiene,

    and untouchable contact in Kerala. Outcasting someone for contract-ing leprosy, Bhasi intimates, is little different from denying untouch-ables entry into a temple. The disenchantment that began to emergein Bhasis writings up until his death in 1992 had its absurd side as well:because of his prominent role in the history of communism in Kerala,anything he wrote, no matter how critical of the communists, was usu-ally showered with prizes by those he sought to critique. For better orworse, the revolution for which Bhasi fought had become the state;Bhasi tried in vain to have his critique taken seriously. As the revolu-

    tionary rhetoric became increasingly empty over the years, the tradi-tion of political farce that began early in the century reemerged as a

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    central critical voice in the political theatre of Kerala. In short, to avoidco-optation by the revolutionary state, political theatre had to bringout the revolutionary clowns, so to speakonly this time, the clownsmeant serious business.

    Civic Chandran and the Reincarnation of Thoppil Bhasi

    Right from the start of Civic Chandrans play, it is clear that theicons and symbols of the revolution are in for a thrashing and Chan-dran is going to approach his subject with a nothing-is-s acr eddemeanor. The prologue begins with the sound of Communist Partysongs (of the type that were written for Thoppil Bhasis original play)which glorify the sacrifice of the great martyrs of the revolution. These

    songs, drawn from the music of older plays and movies, can evokeeither a feeling of nostalgia or an implication of living in the past. Asthe curtain rises, Mala enters carrying the red flag of the revolution.She is in a graveyard, surrounded by martyrs, and the juxtapositionof the glory songs and the somber gravestones could not be more star-tling. Slowly the other characters from Thoppil Bhasis You Made Me aCommunist! enter. The first to speak is Paramu Pillaiwho, it will berecalled, speaks proudly at the end of Bhasis play that he has beenmade into a communist, just as the characters march off with the flagheld high. In the prologue of Civic Chandrans play, Paramu Pillai, shy

    and humbled, is surrounded by the graves of those who paid such aterribly high price to make him a communist: All of you have mademe into a communist, havent you? he ponders, adding weakly anddiffidently, That is what I am. When Kesavan Nayar, his supposedfoe, comforts him by saying that times change, Paramu Pillai respondsby saying he would like to lead a procession with the flag, an ironicstatement considering the morose setting. Finally Mala speaks, andChandrans new take on Bhasi and the whole idea of the revolutionbecomes clear. Standing alone on the stage after the other charactershave left, Mala transforms the symbol of the flag, changing its red

    from the proud color of revolution to the mournful hue of blood.That flag is my flag, the flag of my community, she says, but . . . butthis time we lost. She is unable to finish and breaks into tears. As Malacries, however, a shadowy figure appears smoking the cheap kind ofcigarette called bidi. When the figure speaks, it becomes clear that thisis none other than Thoppil Bhasi himself, back from the dead. Mala,he says, I have come to see you again. The figure of Bhasi thenannounces the play of Civic Chandran, describing it not as a drama(natakam), but as an antidrama (pratinatakam), and the curtain falls.

    Although the prologue is relatively short, it is worthwhile topause and examine some of the symbolic and thematic issues that havebeen introduced since they are not only very rich but suggest why

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    Chandrans play was so controversial when it appeared. First, we havethe image of the graveyarditself a disturbing setting and a scene that(as Chandran points out later in the play) no one in the revolutionwants to think about, except when placing wreaths for photo oppor-tunities. The graveyard is also a common theme in the political litera-ture of Kerala, a loaded image that portends the retribution of spiritswho died unjust or unnatural deaths.8 Here Chandran is implying thatthe revolution is dead or that the martyrs are restless because a failedrevolution has rendered their deaths unjust. Second, there is theimage of the red flagprobably the most prominent image of Bhasisoriginal playwhich Chandran wastes no time deflating as an emptysymbol of failed revolution. Much of Chandrans play is devoted to

    rewriting the symbol of the flag and the heroic processions in whichit is carried; after he deflates and then ridicules it, he ultimatelyredeems it and appropriates it for the people by taking it out of thehands of the Communist Party leadership. Third, there is the charac-ter of Mala, who, as we will see, is brought back from the dead andshown to be the true hero of Bhasis play. (Paramu Pillai is com-monly thought of as the hero.) Chandrans message here is that whatis important about the revolution is not what it madefor example, acommunist out of Paramu Pillaibut rather what it forgot: in thiscase, Mala and her (low-caste) community. Finally, lest anyone be

    ruffled by this disparaging of the holy text of Bhasis original play,Chandran takes the outrageous step of bringing Bhasi back from thegrave to lend legitimacy to Chandrans satirical interpretation.9 Just asMala has reclaimed the red flag, Chandran has reclaimed the spirit ofBhasi to take the revolution away from the revolutionaries.

    The first act opens with the character of the watchman, thesymbolic guardian of the revolution and caretaker of the graveyard ofthe martyrs, asleep on the job, his face covered with a copy of ThoppilBhasis play You Made Me a Communist. The image is as amusing as it isprofound. In the background, the news is blaring over the radio that

    Gopalan has been elected chief minister and would like to come toplace a wreath for the martyrs at the cemetery. The watchman wakesup and walks, without thinking, as if he is in a parade, signaling theempty and somnambulist tone of such official ceremonies as wreathlaying. At that moment, a different sort of procession enters: a funeralprocession, led by Bharati, the adopted daughter of Mala, and an oldman whose identity is not yet revealed. The watchman is upsettherecannot possibly be any burials in the graveyard to mar the chief min-isters visitand rushes to intervene: Jesus, who is this? Whose

    corpse? Bharati walks to the graveyard wall and writes Malas namenext to the date 1994: This is Mala, she says. And picking up thecopy of the play that was on the watchmans face, she clarifies that it is

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    Thoppil Bhasis Mala. The old man then states: It is now themoment to decide not only who is the hero of [Thoppil Bhasis] play,but also of the movement. Mala, wake up! . . . History is forgotten.Bharati then begs Mala to rise up and tell the people what has beenhidden, how the flag of the revolution was taken away from Mala andgiven to Gopalan and Kesavan Nayar. Bharati then explains furtherwhat has happened to the revolution and the communists in termsthat manage to conjure up the most painful issue of twentieth-centuryKerala: not only was the flag taken from Mala and her community, butMala and Karamban [her father] are once again kept at a distance ofsixty-four feet. The latter refers to the former practice of keepinguntouchables literally at a distance from all higher castes. Through

    Bharatis statement, Chandran is claiming that the communists, farfrom saving the untouchables as they have often claimed, have insteadbecome a high caste of their own, putting the untouchables back intheir place and turning their backs on the revolution.

    Mala eventually rises from the deadshe walks as if asleep soperhaps she was only sleeping a Snow Whitelike sleepand erasesher name from the wall. The watchman is nearly at his wits end butthen takes comfort, nervously, from the fact that this is just make-believe, this is just a play. Chandran is beginning to pile deeper anddeeper layers of meaning atop one another through references inter-

    nal and external to the play and by repeated farcical statements thatcan be read in different ways. The serious rhetoric of the politicians inthe play sounds ludicrous, and the ludicrous characters, like the watch-man, appear as disturbingly serious (political) orators. By having thewatchman proclaim that this is just a play, Civic Chandran is intro-ducing an impossible conundrum that characterizes the politics ofmodern Kerala. If it is just a drama, then no one should be upset sincethe claims are not real. But this also means that Thoppil Bhasis orig-inal play was just a drama, too, and hence its claims, and perhaps therevolution of which it is part, cannot be real. What is real and what

    is not becomes difficult to discernin Act 3, for instance, many of thecharacters talk of how they were invented in various other works offiction and movies. Hence fictional characters of one author beginquoting lines from other authors to show that they recognize theworks in which the others were invented. Everything is framed andhighlighted as fiction. But since Chandran is arguing that the claimsof the communists (and other politicians as well) are equally fictitious,all of it, when brought together on the stage, is painfully real.10

    Act 2 is taken up with a long conversation among Sumam,

    Mala, and another character, Matyu, in which the love triangle (Gopa-lan, Sumam, Mala) is revisited. In the course of the conversation, itbecomes clear that Gopalan could never have married Mala, since

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    Gopalan, though a comrade (Communist Party member), is educatedand virtuous and hence far above the station of the dark-skinned, une-ducated, untouchable Mala. Again Chandran is claiming that the com-munists have settled comfortably into the hierarchical society they sup-posedly fought to dismantle; the martyrs of that struggle are buried inthe graveyard, where the conversation about love takes place. Thereare also intimations that Gopalan had a daughter by Mala. But sinceGopalan married Sumam, it is hinted that the youthful revolutionaryfrom Bhasis play, despite his rhetoric of equality between caste andgender, could not overcome the attitude that there are some kinds ofgirls one gets pregnant (Mala) and other kinds of girls one marries(Sumam). Indeed, at the beginning of Act 3 Bharati says of Mala that

    [she] is dark-complexioned, no? Moreover she is a low-caste pulakalli.A laborer. Even though she is a comrade, she desired an educated Nay-yar boy . . . he, tut, tut. Civic Chandran has used the character of Malato show exactly who has been forgotten, indeed despised, by the revo-lution: women and untouchables.11 Bharati is reproached by the OldMan and laments that the person who is now despised by everyone,Mala, is in fact the best of the lot. Any revolution that ignores thesetwo groups or forgets the meaning of the term comrade or the valueof the laborers, implies Chandran, is simply not worth its weight in redrevolutionary flags.

    As the play continues, Civic Chandran expands his farcical meta-phors and images and weaves them together, not only within the text,but with characters, events, and scenes from other texts as well. TheOld Man at one point confesses to the watchman that he is a rehashedcharacter from previous revolutionary dramas and movies, claimingthat his first role came in Rantitanazhi(Two Measures of Rice). Rev-olutionary literature and drama, Chandran seems to say, simply tellsthe same old story over and over again, changing a name or two hereand there, but essentially telling the same old yarns. Chandran alsomixes his literary figures with real-life historical figures such as C. P.

    Ramaswamy Aiyar or Ayyankali,12 and, as we have already seen, withThoppil Bhasi himself, suggesting that it is difficult or perhaps irrele-vant to separate real life from fiction in the current state of politics.The lines are blurred not merely between real life and fiction but alsobetween past and present. The Communist Party is repeatedly charac-terized as a remnant of the old ordernot simply in the repeated dis-cussions of caste, which slowly reveal the hypocrisy in the use of theword comrade (sakhave), but also in blunt statements such as Bha-ratis observation in Act 4 that during communist rule the red flag was

    merely a substitute for the maharajas conch (a symbol of royalty andold Kerala). The blurring of past and present also reveals a pervasivesense of historical injustice. The martyrs are restless, says the Old Man

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    standing in the cemetery: Tonight, right here, dont you see? . . . Nowthe martyrs of the revolution, unknown to history, arise and awake,asking, Has the revolution come or not? Have our dreams come true?They thirst for their [proper] funerals. Until the revolution is prop-erly done, their deaths were unjustand hence they cannot, so tospeak, rest in peace.

    By repeatedly pointing out that his drama is merely a play,Chandran prevents the audience from losing itself in the romanceof drama and revolution. At one point he implies that the people haveforgotten the difference between fighting a revolution and watching aplay about fighting a revolution. In Act 4, for instance, the Old Mansays to Bharati:

    Forty-five years ago [Bhasis play] was written and presented morethan five thousand times. You know, child, we loved that play morethan the Party itself. For the old communists like us, performing thedrama was the supreme deed. In every village where the play was per-formed, the red flag would be raised.

    Yet Chandran is not willing to put all the blame for forgetting the rev-olution on the shoulders of government officials. He also laments thetendency of contemporary laborers to forget the hardship of the orig-

    inal struggle now that they are used to government handouts andbenefits. At one point he reminds the audience that the original goalof the workers movement was not higher wages but recognition oftheir dignity. Despite the trenchant and often bitterly sarcastic lan-guage of Chandran, the form of the play suggests a willingness tounderstand the ease with which revolutions are forgotten: by shiftingthe action of his play back and forth between real-time scenes in Chan-drans play and the recreation of scenes from Bhasis original playand by bringing together references and characters from other revo-lutionary dramas past and present alongside historical figures and

    eventsChandran suggests that confusion may be an inevitable ifunintentional by-product of revolutionary fervor, particularly as itdecays into revolutionary orthodoxy. Even so, Chandran seems clearon one point: the act of forgetting and the production of amnesiac his-tory are the most powerful enemies of the revolutionhence thecrime of forgetting Mala and those like her.

    It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the action of the playand, to the extent that it is discernible, the moral of the story centeron the awakening of the people to their revolutionary memories. The

    action of the drama builds to its climax in the last act with the gro-tesquely staged ceremony in which the chief minister wants to lay awreath at the graveyard of the martyrs. The ceremony is to be con-

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    ducted within a larger event composed of political processions thatreveal, through Chandrans words, the hollowness of the revolution.In the processional dance by the lower castes, for instance, the watch-man observes that most of them have forgotten their traditional dances(dances that tend to announce their place in the social order). Henceonly those in the procession who have remembered their dances andcan act traditionally will be visible to the audience. The true revolu-tion (to forget ones dance is to shed ones identity from the oppres-sive past) is thus ensconced in a hollow shell of indigenous, prerevo-lutionary culture.

    In the last act of Chandrans play, the old flag from Bhasis play,tattered and worn, is found by the characters, sewn up, and renovated.

    This image is juxtaposed with the two red flags on the front of thechief ministers official car, which are bright and shiny and representa-tive of the ruling elite. The ghost of Thoppil Bhasi returns to announcethe arrival of the new, real revolution, which has the communistsquaking in their sandals. Still, Chandrans play is an antidrama andhence would not allow for a neat ending. We can read the ending ofCivic Chandrans drama in at least two ways: either his political theatreis a polemic document, calling for a new revolution, or it is a playwhich says that any new revolution, if it emerges, will exist only in aplay. The revolution is deadlong live the revolution.

    The Farcical Mosaic

    As we have seen, Civic Chandran describes his play as antidrama(pratinatakam), or antitheatre, and it is worth pausing for a moment toreflect on what this means. According to Jacques Scherer (1975), anti-theatre was a form of drama that emerged in eighteenth-centuryWestern Europe (particularly France) as theatre in the generic sensebecame associated with acceptable and establishment valueseven inits farcical or satirical forms.13 What antitheatre represented, there-fore, was a more extreme, more subversive, and more grotesque form

    of farcical drama that questioned the very idea of theatre as a concepteven as it utilized it to articulate its venomous lexicon of ridicule andantiestablishment farce. Although the action and nature of Civic Chan-drans antidrama may seem a bit removed from eighteenth-centuryFrance, the situations are remarkably analogous: by calling his play anantidrama, Chandran is clearly suggesting that the formerly revolu-tionary art of the Communist Party in Kerala has ossified into an estab-lishment of its own. Yet because the establishment still speaks throughthe language of resistance, radicalism, and revolution, the normal

    antiestablishment lexicon through which the peoples theatre mightspeak has already been appropriated. Hence just as subversive play-wrights of eighteenth-century Western Europe had to outfarce the

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    language of (establishment) farce, revolutionary playwrights in pre-sent-day Kerala must outradicalize radical theatre with the extra bur-den of being stripped of their natural vocabulary. The words of theantidrama are thus overloaded with meaningand in another sense,one that is perfect for the language of farce, antiliterary.

    One can, of course, recognize in all of this a trace of MikhailBakhtins belief, interpreted through Rabelais, in the liberating andsubversive power of laughter.14 What is interesting about Civic Chan-drans play in this regard, however, is that it poses an altogether noveland disturbing question: Rabelasian laughter may be a form of resis-tance in that it portends the ever-present possibility of subversive rev-olution, but what if it turns out that the revolution itself is a joke? Left-

    ist theatre, indeed leftist regimes in general, reveal a pathetically lowthreshold of tolerance when it comes to self-ridicule; revolutionarytheatre as a state-sponsored endeavor, whether in its Chinese, Soviet,or Malayali models, has as a rule been decidedly unfunny.15 In theglory days (if such a description is possible) of the Soviet Empire orthe Communist Bloc, literary works such as Mikhail Bulgakovs Masterand Margarita or Milan Kunderas The Joke, which hinted at the pos-sibility of self-directed ridicule, were deemed subversive and oftenbanned entirely. The revolutionary theatre of the Communist Party inIndia has similarly remained straight-faced and remarkably intolerant

    of self-ridicule: Thoppil Bhasis plays may have been popular, but theywere serious to the point of melodrama. Certainly there were thosewho ridiculed Bhasis revolutionary melodrama, but that was beforethe revolution came to town. Civic Chandran wants something trulydifferent: a revolution that is not afraid to laugh.

    Even without the revolutionary aspects of theatrical farce inCommunist-ruled Kerala, Civic Chandran is writing in the context ofa well-established postindependence and India-wide trend of theatri-cal performance. This trend has relied on increasingly sophisticatedand subversive approaches to keep farce in the realm of peoples the-

    atre when the political spectacles of the actual state itself seemdesigned to act as competition in a contest of farces. Girish KarnadsKannada-language play Muhammad Tughalak(Tughlaq), published in1964 just as the era of Nehrus rule was coming to an end, has takenon an increased sense of relevance and resonance as post-Nehru poli-ticsparticularly the totalitarian period of Indira Gandhis emer-gence in 19751977reveals itself as a continuous canard of gro-tesque proportions. Karnads play is not an antidrama but a complexfarce (prahasana vinod) in which serious political rule becomes

    increasingly indistinguishable from political charade and brute forcemasquerades as idealism in the hands of Muhammad Tughlaq, a four-teenth-century monarch of northern India. In the final, thirteenth

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    act, the clown of the play, Aziz, who has undertaken a series ofincreasingly grandiose and bizarre schemes in which he masqueradesas something other than what he is (an ordinary, low-status washer-man), finally schemes his way into Tughlaqs palace disguised as thereligious leader Ghiyas-ud-din. When Tughlaq finds him out, Azizadmits to killing Ghiyas-ud-din and coming in his place. In an inter-esting twist, however, he begins to recount his personal history ofscheming to Tughlaq and concludes with self-confident arrogancethat he should not be punished but rewarded:

    It is true that I killed Ghiyas-ud-din and deceived you, master. Buteven with all of this, I am in truth your disciple. In the last five years I

    have considered my every act to be done in your hired service. Youmight ask, who else is there in this kingdom who has devoted the pastfive years of his life in your service? [Karnad 1964, 125]

    Tughlaq is at first angry with Azizs insolence, calling him a foolbecause of his sophistic reasoning. Yet Tughlaq soon sees the reasonin Azizs wordsbursting out with buffoonish, almost insane laughterat his point of enlightenmentand, referring to himself as a fool inthe next moment, awards Aziz with an official post for his services.

    The point here is to show that even outside the charged con-

    text of revolutionary, leftist theatre in Kerala, the subversive and polit-ical potential for laughter has been denied through its co-optationand inclusion in the words and deeds of the statehere representedby analogy through the character of Tughlaq. The nonsensical rea-soning through which Aziz, as the clown, justifies his heinous actionsturns out to be synonymous with the reasoning through which Tugh-laq has pursued his own political intrigues: government action is itselfa farce. The clown does not merely imitate the kingpart of the powerof farce is in recognizing the clown and the king as separate charac-tersbut in fact elides with the king: the clown becomes the king and

    the king becomes the clown. And in that moment the possibility ofclowning, or even of laughter, disappears. Karnads play implies thata despotic or totalitarian state is one that precludes the possibility oflaughter. By extension, then, and in the same vein as Karnads critique(or warning), we can interpret the unamused reactions of communistofficials to Civic Chandrans play some considered it nearly sacrile-giousin Kerala as corroboration of one of Chandrans key points:that the communist state has become the very tyranny against whichthe revolution was originally waged.

    Yet the laughter-thwarting political machinations that have hin-dered or complicated the development of peoples theatre in Keralaspecifically and in India generally have not always come from outside

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    sources (such as government action or inaction). Many of the prob-lems have been self-inflicted. If we look at the development of revolu-tionary theatre in Bengal, for instance, as it is interpreted through theeyes of Rustom Bharucha, we can see how the maturation of a truepeoples theatre has been stunted by a rather large bundle of cul-tural and ideological baggage. Bharucha interprets the evolution of apeoples theatre in Bengal as the movement away from foreign, espe-cially European, dramatic models and toward more indigenous mod-els that are presumably closer to the people. Thus while the nine-teenth-century Bengali playwright Michael Madhusadhan Dutt ispraised for using Western ideas to throw off the fetters forged for usby a servile admiration of everything Sanskrit (Madhusadhans words),

    Bharucha takes pains to point out that Madhusadhan was, in all prob-ability, embarrassed by the aping of Western manners and customs byEnglish-educated Indians of his day (Bharucha 1983, 14). Similarly,Bharucha quotes another pivotal figure in the rise of political theatrein Bengal from the 1920s, Sisir Bahaduri, who lamented: We havemade the mistake of imitating the English models, of forsaking ourown truth for the falsity of an alien import. We have to rectify the mis-take and go back to the ways of our yatra (Bharucha 1983, 33).16 Yetif what is alien is inherently false, then we arrive, both throughBharucha and through the playwrights he quotes, at an egregious con-

    tradiction: when the peoples theatre emerges in Bengal in recog-nizable form in the 1930s, it does so in association with groups such asthe Progressive Writers Association, which was inspired by literary andcultural movements in Europe, and the Indian Peoples Theatre Asso-ciation, which served as a conduit for the importation of (European)Marxist models of theatrical performance. (Indeed, the Internatio-nale was often sung at performances.) Hence the arrival of the peo-ples theatre in rural Bengal was not so much a triumph of the Indian(or, better, the Bengali) voice acting out against the oppressors of thepeople as it was a forum in which one Western alien voice (Marxism/

    communism) was translated into local dialect to serve as the peoplesopposition to another alien voice (colonialism/capitalism).

    In fact, the layers of irony and contradiction are even more richand complex. P. Kesava Devs short story Otayilninnu (Out of theGutter), for instance, one of the most important pieces of radical lit-erature in Malayalam, drew heavily in both content and ideology fromVictor Hugos Les Miserables, implying that the vocabulary of social jus-tice need not rely exclusively on the lexicon of the orthodox (Marxist/communist) left. There are even problems with the claim that certain

    folk drama styles, toward which radical or peoples theatre in Indiahas tended, are somehow more authentic or more indigenous thanother types of theatre. The yatra ( jatra) of Bengaland its Malayali

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    counterpart the jathaboth claim to be folk theatre styles which havetheir origins among the people; their significance for political theatrein India stems from the fact that they were supposedly an indigenousfolk model that, among other things, questioned the Western conven-tions of the proscenium arch or the passive, paying audience.17 Yet theprocession that lies at the heart of the concept of yatra has gonethrough a number of transformations since its putative origins as anorthodox (top down) missionary activity among the followers ofChaitanyas tantric vision of Vaishnavite devotionalism.18 In the mid-nineteenth century in Bengal, the yatrabecame secularized in contentand heavily westernized in formthe proscenium arch, for instance,was incorporated during this periodand, as the story goes, only

    returned to its original form as a theatre intended for the ruralmasses (and eventually the urban) when it was reclaimed in the twen-tieth century by radical leftist playwrights in Bengal, most importantlyby Utpal Dutt. The story of its reclamation for the people and by thepeople, however, has a few kinks in it that tend to get smoothed overin the heroic version of the tale. Before the communist and leftist play-wrights reinvented the yatraas a secular form for missionaries of radi-cal propaganda, colonial development workers and social reformershad already done much of the groundwork in this direction by utiliz-ing traditional forms of mass communication (folk drama) as well as

    novel forms (movies, magic lanterns) to indigenously express the mes-sages of agricultural development, public health and hygiene, villageimprovement, and civic social relations (Zook 1998).

    Again the accomplishment of Civic Chandran in this respectshould not be underestimated. For he is working in an environmentwhich faces new conceptual challenges that early revolutionary play-wrights did not have to faceat least not to the degree witnessed inthe 1990s. In addition to facing the orthodox wrath of the communiststate government in Kerala, Civic Chandran is also searching for a truepeoples theatre, one with indigenous roots, at a time when the

    national government and many state governments in India are increas-ingly under the influence of the politics of filling old symbols with newpolitical meanings, a process arguably perfected by the BharatiyaJanata Party (BJP). The BJP government, along with other culturalorganizations with a Hindu fundamentalist agenda, such as the Rash-triya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS), are currently in the process of tryingto reclaim and classify as indigenous anything that they want to havepositively associated with an exclusively Hindu India. What this meansfor playwrights and troupes who are experimenting with folk or osten-

    sibly indigenous modes of theatre is that the peoples theatre suddenlyaligns discomfortingly well with the political program of a quasi-fasciststate.19 Looking for indigenous roots for peoples theatre simultane-

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    ously draws such theatre into the hands of the people and the state, andin fact might unwittingly bring the state deeper into the lives of thosewho are in fact seeking to distance themselves from it or resist its per-vasive power.20 The absurdity of such a situation introduces a newseries of challenges for politically active or civic-minded playwrights incontemporary India and helps to explain the type of extreme farce ofwhich Civic Chandrans play is but one prominent example.21

    So if borrowing from the alien source is inherently falseyetsearching for the indigenous source brings the unwelcome approvalof the state (with the threat of incorporation)what then, to return toour original question, is a revolutionary playwright to do? Some haveargued that this state of indeterminacyof being neither above nor

    below, neither indigenous nor foreignconstitutes the essence of thepostcolonial condition. Indeed, some have gone so far as to suggestthat this state of indeterminacy, insofar as it denies the categorizationand classification supposedly reminiscent of colonial hegemony, is infact both a state of suffering and a state of resistance (Gupta 1998).But indeterminacy and the inability to be categorized easily are surelynot the monopoly of non-Western or postcolonial peoples. Hence thisargument is misguided to the extent that it privileges the uniquenessof alienation and indeterminacy for the postcolonial world. The diffi-culty of sorting through the history and current status ofyatra, for

    instance, remains a difficulty only insofar as the mixture of styles andinfluences is perceived as a problem. The Indian (and South Asian)past and present are inhabited by the spirits of many different culturalinfluences that can only be rendered Indian or alien by imposingthe colonial boundaries of the Indian nation anachronistically.

    It seems to me that it is the artifice of searching for pure cul-tural traditions or dramatic styles that produces the absurdities cur-rently facing radical playwrights in contemporary India and SouthAsia; the supposed tension between the indigenous and the alien isfalse and illusory. When Nandi Bhatia tries to explain away the embar-

    rassment of the fact that the radical Indian Peoples Theatre Associa-tion often staged European plays and used European influence by stat-ing that they did so to escape censorship and to camouflage theirmessages and propagate their anti-imperial ideas in covert ways, wecan see the same disturbing process of trying to excise the alien andreclaim it as indigenous that we see in, for example, the BJPs attemptto pass off Western nuclear technology as an indigenous weapons sys-tem (Bhatia 1997, 446; see Zook 2000). If a true peoples theatre is toemerge in contemporary India, one that can resist the machinations

    of the state and assist in procuring social justice for the people whoconstitute its primary audience, then it must embrace the mixing ofstyles and influences and unmask the insidious politics of inventing

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    the indigenous by dissolving the putative contradiction between alienand pure sources in the construction of civic culture.22 The oppressedand downtrodden of India (and elsewhere) come from many differentcultures and classesthey are, to use a much vaunted but poorlyunderstood term, multicultural and hence only a multicultural the-atre in India, one that reaches across cultural boundaries both withinIndia and without, can lay claim to being in any true sense a theatre ofthe people.

    Beyond Farce

    In much of the literature on the peoples theatre or any the-atre that deems itself radical or political, there is a tendency to assume

    that such theatre, especially insofar as it eschews formal scenarios oftheatre and formal methods of presentation, is somehow closer to themasses of common people and somehow more in tune with their day-to-day challenges and sufferings. This may be the case, but not neces-sarily. Forms of theatre that allow for intimacy between audience andactor and are presented in public forums designed to attract a massaudience are not the exclusive domain of theatres that present thetruth as opposed to artificial theatres. In India, political theatrehas tended just as easily toward a theatre of liberation or a theatre ofpropagandaand as the state itself has come to rely increasingly on

    public spectacles of mass politics, the line between the two will beincreasingly difficult to negotiate. Not all theatre in India must tendtoward farce to escape the gravity of nationalism. Girish Karnads mostrecent play, for instance,Agni Mattu Male(The Fire and the Rain), hasmanaged to draw deeply from a little-known tale from the Mahabha-ratawithout sliding into a nationalistic call for the revival of indigenoustheatre by utilizing universal themes that extend beyond the confinesof Hinduism or the Indian nation.23 This would suggest the possibilityof another direction in which political theatre in contemporary Indiamight proceed: not toward a drama that revives and evokes a heroic

    past, but toward one that interrogates that past as well as the urge torelive it. A vibrant political theatre in contemporary India need notassume the task of choosing which approach works bestthis was oneof the main shortcomings of the rigidly Marxist Indian Peoples The-atre Association. What it can assume is the responsibility for creating apublic space that allows for the possibility of multiple and diverseapproaches through which civic culture may reach into and beyond thepower of the state.24

    Civic Chandrans multilayered satire of contemporary Kerala

    politics and history is certainly one of the richest and most sophisti-cated texts to date offering an artistic critique of Communist Party rule.Gone are the days when a political drama took the form of a melo-

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    dramatic, simplistic play such as Thoppil Bhasis You Made Me a Com-munist. The division of the world into good and bad, into revolution-ary versus reactionary, is no longer a viable approach to social justicethrough the means of political theatre. It is neither the king nor therebel who in the end takes the revolutionary day. Rather, implies CivicChandran, it is the public-spirited commoner who is part critic, partclown, and who is not afraid to laugh, publicly or privately. Negotiat-ing the fine line between orthodoxy and rebellion is no longer so sim-ple as accepting or refusing a copper plaque, as Qamar Azad Hashmiput it. Rather, it is the incorrigibly ambivalent rhetoric of the clown orjester that will fight through the hazy rhetoric of orthodoxy emanatingfrom the corridors of power, regardless of who inhabits their labyrin-

    thine passages. The absurd or convoluted nature of contemporary pol-itics in Kerala (and India in general) may have emptied revolutionarypassion or rhetoric of meaning.Yet Civic Chandran is not willing to letus recede into cynical narcissism. His pointif I read his antiplay cor-rectlyis that farce and satire sustain us both through good times andthrough bad, for without this intermittent laughter there would onlybe tears.

    N O T E S

    1. On the difficulties faced by the Jana Natya Manch, see SafdarHashmis own account (1989, 35) of the attempt to perform the street playDTC ki Dhandli (The Fraudulence of Delhi Transport Corporation) in 1986,which was broken up by police, making the actors criminals. See also thecollection (SAHMAT 1989) of articles relating to Safdar Hashmi, his lifeswork, and the attack that put an end to it all; for another treatment see VanErven (1992, chap. 6).

    2. The Ajoka Theatre in Pakistan, for example, while not strictly astreet theatre troupe, is certainly an informal and unofficial group advocatingthe rights of workers, women, and other communities marginalized by the

    increasingly censored artistic atmosphere in Pakistan. Indeed, in the recentand ongoing crackdown on NGOs and other dissident forces in Pakistan,the Ajoka Theatre was targeted as an important subversive force.

    3. The line of reasoning for this statement would be as follows.According to the Natyasastraof Bharata Muni, the earliest known text on thedramatic arts in South Asia, the cosmic and mythological origins of theatre asa spectacle are considered divinely mandated (an ideological remnant thatlingers in the consecration of theatrical space or in the link between theatreconstruction and temple architecture). And according to Bharata, moreover,it is ordained that the purpose of theatre is both to entertain and to educate.Thus we can surmise that, based on the images, characters, and morals ( rasa,

    or flavor) of the plays, the spectacle of theatre was meant to inculcate ortho-dox behavior and promote social consensus among those in the audience.

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    16. The yatrais discussed below.17. Aside from the yatraand jatha, there are other varieties of folk the-

    atre in India that have a history of continuous reinvention such as the burra-

    katha of Andhra Pradesh or the tamasha of Maharashtra. Recently, evenstaunchly traditional varieties of theatre such as kathakali of Kerala andterukuttuof Tamil Nadu have shown signs of taking on modern, political sub-jects and themes. See also de Bruin (2000).

    18. There are certainly other interpretations of the origins of theyatra, although all of them acknowledge its moralistic, orthodox underpin-nings. Sliwczynska (1998) has argued that the yatras endurance and popu-larity can be explained by its versatility and adaptabilityit continues to serveas something of a mirror for ever-changing (Bengali) sensibilities. AjitkumarGhosh (1985), who starts his history with the yatra, emphasizes its joint ori-

    gins in religious ritual, pilgrimage, and localized folk rituals associated witheroticism.19. Even when the state is not quasi-fascist, political theatre can still

    lend its support, unwittingly or wittingly, to the cultivation of nationally chau-vinistic identities. Nandi Bhatia (1997), for instance, applauds the attempt ofthe Indian Peoples Theatre Association to build a national identity throughdrama. Ignoring the violent hegemony of nationalism itself, Bhatia arguesthat the appropriation of Western dramatic practices for nationalism helpedto advance its counterhegemonic agenda and to rupture the falsely per-petuated ideas about the superior West (p. 445). See also my discussion ofBhatias argument later.

    20. The relationship between the state and theatre, especially duringperiods of political instability or repression, has always been something of ananomaly. Rajini Obeyesekere (1999) focuses on the strange permissivenessallotted to political theatre during a period of cultural authoritarianism. Oneanswer to this puzzle might be found in Roger Allen (1998, 341): In thedecade preceding the 1967 war it appears to have been a deliberate policy ofthe Egyptian government to allow the drama to serve as a safety valve for pub-lic opinion at a time when censorship was otherwise extremely tight; as onecritic puts it, drama served as a kind of popular parliament. For a differentinterpretation see Bodden (1997).

    21. Candreshvar (1994, 7172) notes that to its credit (although a bitlate in my opinion), the Peoples Theatre Movement in India has recognizedthat changed cultural circumstances have forced it to rethink its strategies.According to Candreshvar, the movement has witnessed a new revolution(naya daur) since the 1985 Agra Convention of the Indian Peoples TheatreAssociation (IPTA)a revolution characterized by a desire simultaneously toencourage more (regional) diversity in its tactics and presentations and tohold critical, national dialogues among the various peoples theatre groupsaround the country.

    22. In Ning Zhangs (1998) fascinating study of Western theatre inChina, she argues that new political trends in the 1980s allowed for a plural-

    ism of influences in Chinese theatre, including new experimentation with theworks of Shakespeare, Brecht, and Arthur Miller. Although, as Zhang notes,

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    there was certainly a process of sinicisation in the translation and presenta-tion of many of these works, the entire process in general was creative andexpansiveindeed, many playwrights used this opportunity to expand the

    opportunity of pluralistic political spaces. This is contrasted to the situationin India under the influence of fundamentalist politics: whereas in China theprocess has been productive and no attempt has been made to hide Westerninfluences, in India the process has been constrictive (and perhaps destruc-tive) insofar as it has denied the possibility of foreign influence in favor of anartificial, indigenous culture. See also Li (1995).

    23. See Girish Karnad (1998). This works in many ways. What makesthe plays of Ibsen, Brecht, and others so appealing in India is their ability toexpress themes and emotions that are prevalent in Indian society (and othersocieties as well). Similarly, Karnads play, by utilizing universal themes rather

    than culturally nationalist subjects, might appeal not only to Hindus but toother religions and cultures. This outward movement is opposed to theinward- looking, chauvinistic rhetoric of indigenousness being flaunted by theBJP, the RSS, and, lamentably, many Indians in general.

    24. The ease with which even critical voices can end up supportingthe (nationalist) orthodoxy of their opponents shows how subtle and difficulta task creating a true peoples theatre can be. Obeyesekere (1999), forinstance, though she applauds the critical voices of theatre which took advan-tage of relatively lax censorship rules during much of the Sri Lankan civil war,assumes that Sri Lankan theatre is for the most part synonymous with Sin-halese theatre, thereby supporting the views held by Sinhalese chauvinists

    and extremists who feel that only the Sinhalese are true Sri Lankans.According to Citamparanatan (1994), it was precisely this opinion regardingSinhalese theatre and the Sinhalese language that forced Tamils in SriLanka as early as 1956 to pursue a separate theatrical space of protest devoidof Sinhalese but equally Sri Lankan (p. 113).

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