“Gandhi & Tagore appealed to the Good. We should continue to do so, as Artists or Intellectuals”
I truly believe that I was born a Nehruvian child, even though born into a Bengali household which swore by Subhas Chandra Bose in the clichéd Bose vs Nehru misplaced debate. The atmosphere around me was replete with respect and adherence to an objective connect between Tradition and Modernism, where Tradition was inspected through Modernist concerns.
My very literacy began with children’s versions of Ramayana & Mahabharata, while in our drawing rooms, a healthy debate took place, on various moral positions of the epic characters of these mighty mythologies. Taking apart both the mighty and the mundane, critically, was most common. Thus these mythologies gained a deep, critical respect in my heart, never blind faith.
Every evening, the harmonium would come out and my mother would practice Rabindra Sangeet in all its romanticism, Atul Prasad’s ballads in their spiritualism & Kazi Nazrul’s lores, in their revolutionary zeal…so even the music that penetrated my soul was diverse, myriad and therefore progressive in its appeal.
Literature was, also, of utmost importance in our household and I was encouraged to read World Classics along with Bengali Children’s literature from age four. Thus Charles Dickension dissection of David Copperfield, caught in Victorian mores and the chaos of the Industrial revolution brushed shoulders with indigenous fairy tales, in my reading palette.
Cinema was even more interesting, family viewing being the rule. Mrinal Sen’s angry political films were as much within my five year old gaze as children’s films.
The point being , there was no contradiction in my growing up mind, between East or West , Local or Global, Traditional or Modern, Art and Entertainment, the Progressive and the Spiritual…they were part of the same stream, same civilisational values as represented by Rammohan Roy (social reforms) or Vidyasagar (educational empowerment) or Vivekanand
(spiritual robustness) or Jagdish Bose (scientific outlook) or Satyajit Ray (humanist aesthetics).
All of this being my Bengali heritage and all of them, encapsulated in a Nehruvian vision.
When I started teaching & training in Theatre Studies, almost every play I picked to direct or act was anti-establishment, each one of them. The common fervour was intellectually questioning, the voices were consistently progressive. Thus there was no escape from developing a personal voice which was always critically introspective of every issue and every force…bhakti was beyond belief in my young adult cultural education.
Somewhere along the mid-nineties, a rabid neo consumerism was taking root and youth culture suddenly turned frivolously aspirational, completely nonchalant about the medievalisation of a young Nation by the dark revivalist forces; kicking into our existence with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement via the Rath Yatra culminating into demolishing a historic mosque, creating a militant fundamentalist movement, while the Indian youth was basking in an Internet boom…ironical isn’t it?
And the young budding ‘could have been ‘ playwrights, unlike their predecessors of the 1970s and 1980s were now writing for an expanding Television’s (often) Anti-Culture. The anti-establishment voices were no more mainstream.
The 2000s brought in even more harsh contradictions. The millennium clock was supposed to ring in the eradication of Borders, the world was supposed to get flatter and globalisation was supposed to be the reigning culture…all of it was true at a technological, commercial plane, while India was torn apart by an acceptance of genocidal culture and ideas of ethnic cleansing as demonstrated by Gujrat 2002 .
And around the same time, what did we see in mainstream entertainment— Saas Bahu sagas, joint family jostles, in sharp definition, highly regressive, never ending mega rating / money churning soaps keeping so-called globalised Indians enthralled. Neo liberal economy, technological leaps, global travels, went hand in hand with normalisation of Hate & Revivalism.
We all know that post 2014, the Cultural Fraternity, Entertainment industry sometimes grudgingly but most times willingly decided to collaborate with the openly xenophobic Manuvadi agenda imposed from the top.
I personally realised that it’s as much a personal battle as a professional one. Around 2005, I exited from my very successful and well-paying TV Career, to rely totally on a mix of Theatre and art house cinema, having fought a few fair battles on the sets of TV soaps, refusing to shoot scenes which denigrate female characters in any manner. Though my income plummeted, I have no regrets, as I could not breathe artistically in a vapid, rabid Entertainment Scenario.
Post 2014, even cinema joined the revivalist agenda of religious and cultural nationalism. Two out of three offers were in that category, yet I resisted the mainstream monetary glow and refused multiple projects which pushed the agenda, sometimes subtly but surely. But I completely understand and empathise with those who cannot. I will never judge those who have chosen to be part of these propaganda vehicles, out of professional necessity, political propaganda by itself not so much of a problem, promotion of Hate definitely is, polarisation being the death knell of our diverse civilisational fabric.
I recognise that the conditions which were nurtured over the last several decades for such divide and collaboration, were enabled also due to the relative hard lines of so-called progressives, self- justifying hypocrisy of the privileged liberal class, an arrogance of the intellectual echo chambers and general delusion of the neo liberal ruling class (I cannot exclude myself ) for the fascist anti- cultural forces getting such a leg up and the hidden vitriolic elements crawling out of the holes into our mainstream media and Entertainment space.
I still adhere to the belief, passed down by my mentors, the late Safdar Hashmi, Habib Tanveer, and Ebrahim Alakazi among so many others. That culture will always be a personal struggle of communicating what is inherently essential, with the hope that even if a minority of an audience, gets swayed by progressive aesthetics and ideas, you present, they may out of a sense of awakened consciousness, share it with others and thus the spread of these universal principles will no longer remain within a minority.
That is the hope I carry, with a very realistic outlook that, human society moves in cycles of progress and regress and human beings remain an embodiment of both good and evil.
Gandhi & Tagore appealed to the Good. We should continue to do so, as Artists or Intellectuals.
(The author, Joy Sengupta, is a well-acclaimed actor in theatre and cinema. Apart from awards won for performances in Hazar Chaurasi ki Ma directed by Govind Nihalani and for the portrayal of Gandhi in the ipic play, Samy and the Bengali film, Bilu Rakhosh, Sengupta has worked with legendary directors Habib Tanveer and Safdar Hashmi. He is a teacher of Theatre in Education and used theatre for projects on literacy and social work)