The sixth edition of the Kerala Literature Festival (KLF) began on January 12 in Kozhikode, Kerala. The event is organized by DC Books, a private publisher, with financial support from various public institutions, including departments of the Kerala government. However, there is a complete omission of theatre and theatre literature in the event and Natak,  a state-wide theatre’s collective has “strongly protest and condemn this attitude from the part of organizers and the government.” This statement has been issued recently by Natak through its president,  D. Raghuthaman and secretary,  J. Shailaja.

 The statement raises pertinent questions: “ The question is why theatre, a popular art sector in the state, was not included in this festival, especially considering the event is being conducted with the help of the Kerala government. The festival’s director, K. Satchidanandan, is a prominent poet and playwright himself and is also the Chairman of the Sahitya Academy. This makes the omission even more perplexing. Besides, the Kerala Literature Festival (KLF) is being advertised as one of the largest cultural gatherings in Asia and the largest in South India: apart from an absence of theatre as a medium, theatre literature is conspicuously missing.

“The KLF reportedly focuses on ‘discussions of history, politics, economics, science, art, cinema, culture, technology, genomics, environment, business, and health,’ but does not include theatre. This raises questions about who the festival is organized for and why the Kerala government has provided finance to the initiative without including theatre. The festival is also being advertised as “one of the largest cultural gatherings in Asia and the largest in South India”, which raises further questions about the organizers’ understanding of theatre literature and theatre festivals in other parts of Asia and South India,” the statement reads.

Further, the statement reads, “Despite the festival featuring ‘more than 500 writers and experts from various fields, over 200 intellectual exchange venues, and performance venues for cinema and new-gem music,’ the omission of theatre is striking.

“The organizers’ decision not to include theatre raises questions about their understanding of the cultural significance of theatre in Kerala and other parts of Asia. As representatives of Kerala theatre artists and activists, we strongly condemn the disregard shown to Kerala theatre in this literary festival and see it as a reactionary attempt to cover up the progressive political and artistic movements that have shaped up the Kerala society.”

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In the wee hours of the morning of November 12, Shahid Kabeer, a theatre artist and founder of Kabeera Foundation located in Andheri area of Mumbai was allegedly forcefully taken to the D.N. Nagar Police station on a false complaint. Shahid Kabeer was conducting rehearsals for a play named “Tafteesh” which is based on the story of the much controversial Batla House encounter of 2008.

The infamous Batla House encounter case was touted to be fake by many human rights activists back then, when the incident took place, which ended up in the death of two alleged terrorists and one encounter specialist police inspector. For many years, questions have been raised on whether this was a real encounter or a fake one. Such questions have been humiliating for the police force and have raised questions on their credibility, even though it was a case of the Delhi police.

Once taken to the police station, the police allegedly demanded from Shahid Kabeer his identity documents and questioned him why he was showing a play on Batla House encounter case which is against the police. The police even advised him to refrain from going ahead with showcasing of the said play. The police did not provide Mr. Kabeer any written complaint or order which warranted his detention for even a brief period. He was allowed to go in the afternoon, the same day. This could have been an attempt of the police to intimidate Mr. Kabeer who is the Director of the play. The play is scheduled to be showcased in Andheri West on November 14.

Using intimidation tactics like this is not a new practice and it is usually done by police when they receive a complaint or information in apprehension of commission of a crime. The police seemed to have abused their position by allegedly detaining a theatre person, questioning him for a few hours merely because he was using his freedom of expression to showcase a controversial and humiliating encounter case.

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Nilesh opposes his father and continues with theatre, but shortly Dinesh dies of suffocation in gutter. Thereafter, Nilesh sets to find employment but is turned down due to his caste. Ultimately, even he is forced to do what his father did for a living. Sadly, this is not just any tragic story; this is the story of lakhs of Valmiki families that have been bonded to manual scavenging.
This play was performed in the Indian Institute of Management (IIM)- Ahmedabad by the Whistle Blower Theatre group. All the actors and members of the group are or were students of Shree H.K. Arts College. These students got together for performing theatrical arts and participating in competition but ultimately ended up performing social issue-based theatre. It is inspiring to note how a group of actors took up the role of social change drivers.

“Urfe Aalo” is inspired by a childhood experience of Maulikraj, their director. He recalls – “In my childhood, my friend – Vinod slapped me when I like all others called him “Aalo.” Do you even understand what Aalo is, Vinod asked, and I didn’t know what it meant. Aalo was a Gujarati slang, which meant “one who begs for food.” Vinod had earned this name because he belonged to the manual scavenging community, which goes around asking for food in the community, which they clean.

Nilesh, the protagonist, represents Vinod, while the character of Dinesh, the father is inspired by Dinesh Bhai, a sanitation sweeper near their college. Dinesh Bhai plays flute beautifully. Still, his family, asks him – why do you play the flute? They believe that it is a waste of time. He set aside all his hopes and aspirations and resigns to the reality that he is a Valmiki and he is destined to clean gutters.

Through such interactions with the Valmiki community as well as through secondary research, the group conceptualized the play, portraying the dominant themes while also designing the playset to enable the audience to visualize the life of a manual scavenger and empathize with this cause. They have performed the play “Urfe Aalo” a total of 35 times till now in different formats.

The group believes that issue-based theatre has transformed them as social beings. Almost all of them joined college, not knowing what they wish to do in their lives ahead, but theatre has given direction to many of their lives. Some are now pursuing a masters in social work, one of them has developed a community center in his chawl, and few of them have also decided to pursue developmental journalism.

Their changed perspectives towards social issues easily manifest themselves through the instances they shared. Pallavi recalled – “My family kept a different utensil for the sanitation worker (Shardaben). After “Urfe Aalo,” once my mom asked me to give Shardaben water. I gave her water not in the Shardaben glass but in a glass that all of us in the family use. When my mother retorted, I explained her rather strongly – How would you feel if someone behaved with you in a similar manner?”

Another group member Dipak recalled, “I have always seen people sweeping roads but never thought about who they are. Through the theatre, I saw a change in myself. Now I like to talk with people sweeping roads, people belonging to other oppressed communities and understand their perspective”.

Such issue-based theatre has the capability of playing a transformative role for the society as a whole, first affecting the artists, their families, and then their audience. The interactions that these artists have with individuals from oppressed societies brings about a change in their attitude and behavior. They also bring changes in the lives of people whose story they tell. Dinesh bhai’s family which didn’t let them play flute, after watching their play, encourages him to do so.

As more and more people get exposed to such Nilesh and Dinesh through theatre or in real life, they would be able to empathize with the cause and would themselves move in the direction of social change.

I would like to wish the Whistle blower Theatre Group all the best in their mission to sensitize their audience to the issue of manual scavenging among many others and to drive social change.

First published in Counterview.
 

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Credit: Harpreet Kalsi/Penned in the Margins. Some rights reserved.

1998, Kolkata. I am sitting in the bedroom of my parent’s flat watching David Lean’s version of E.M. Forster’s Passage to India. My memory is watery, but I recall certain flickering images on the screen: night-time, cut to a shot of the moon, cut to the camera panning to a sign outside a colonial club. Dogs and Indians Not Allowed. The memory fades to black.

2015, London. Channel 4’s Indian Summers is on the screen. Shot in Malaysia, the story is set in Shimla, which is in the foothills of the Himalayas, and was known as the summer capital of the Raj. Inexplicably, this imposter Shimla is painted in rich green hues as a humid tropical paradise, where the Angrez(English) perspire profusely, while the natives are like cartoon characters mouthing speech bubbles. This is the Indian exotic that returns to the Victorian fear of, and fascination with, the subcontinent and its people, and their supposedly uninhibited nature, sensual and wild.

The camera zooms in on another sign outside another European club in British India. Dogs and Indians Not Allowed. Suddenly, the earlier memory, the fading film image, one that had remained buried and suppressed, resurfaces like one of those corpses that float on the Ganges, shockingly visible, bobbing on filthy water, garlanded by flowers and toxic pollutants. The existence of that sign in the present, on TV, the personal and historical memory of it, humiliates and shames me.

Lean’s Passage to India was part of the Raj revival of the early 1980s in the UK—Salman Rushdie wrote witheringly about it in ‘Outside the Whale’. Three decades later, plus ça change. Intriguingly, in these films and TV shows, there is little on how Indians responded to this shaming provocation. The sign itself was part of colonial policy to keep Indians in their place, to remind them of their subhuman status in the machinery of empire, despite the collaborators, the clerks, the judges, the teachers, the district officers, the maharajas, as well as all the soldiers who laid down their lives in the thousands for Europe’s battles.

Today, the West has outsourced its many wars, and we still live in a world where refugees fleeing these wars are referred to as ‘swarms.’ Language still has infinite powers of exclusion. The wretched of the Earth must address the terrible power of these words, appropriate and remake and dismantle them, in order to become human again.

I grew up in Kolkata and Mumbai, two (post)colonial cities that have played a vital part shaping modern and postmodern India. The Angrez designed large areas of the cities, though Indian hands built them. The Angrez set up schools and colleges and churches, and went about a bewildering and radical process of naming these cities, their streets, and the myriad-coloured slaves who served them. Kolkata was divided into ‘white town’ and ‘black town.’ There was a ‘gray town’ as well, in the heart of the city, north of Dharamtala, where the Chinese, the Armenians, the Afghans and many more lived and worked.

The streets of central Kolkata, once the second city of the British Empire, still echo its imperial past: Russell Street, Elgin Road, Loudon Street, Park Street. It’s much the same in south Mumbai. Despite having an ancient civilisation, the conscious classification and naming of a million Indians (and Indias) happened during colonial rule. Some of the Angrez went native, married Indians, studied Sanskrit, styled themselves as nawabs, morphed into William Dalrymple’s ‘white mughals’—the fairest of the fair, the uber-caste.

Indians, however, were left to negotiate history via appropriation and bricolage. Thomas Macaulay, who sneered at, and rubbished, everything Indian without knowing an Indian language, went about remaking the modern Indian mind by constructing an educational policy that continues to shape, and blight, India today. In 1835, he said: “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern—a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”

English became the first language of education, of aspiration, of power. A new type of mutant Indian was born. Many of these mutants were inspired by the ideas of 19th century modernity emerging from the West. The Bengal/Indian Renaissance happened as a negotiation between Europe and ancient India. Rabindranath Tagore—the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature—famously said that he was a product of Hindu, British, and Muslim cultures. However, I suspect that under Western eyes, the ideas of a complex, hybrid Indian modernity will always be viewed as derivative.

The classrooms of Kolkata and Mumbai’s better schools, with names like St. Xavier’s and Cathedral and John Connon, still teach Shakespeare and Keats. Many of the graduates of these schools, ‘brown sahibs’, emigrate, or stay in India, and use their access to the language of the colonisers to exercise an almost colonial power in their nation. Aatish Taseer has written extensively about this in a searing and honest way. A dismantling needs to take place. The revolution will be live.

I am a product of all the cultural neuroses I’ve cited. I grew up in with English, Bengali, and Hindi, but fundamentally, I am one of Macaulay’s great grandchildren, defined by English.

I left India when I was eighteen, moving to the US to study in a small liberal arts college with a generous scholarship programme. I worked many jobs during those years. I painted houses, cleaned bars, pushed carts in libraries, taught English at university, travelled in Greyhound buses, went homeless in New York, voyaged through the American mythic, living a life some Indians would have viewed with some embarrassment. I remember an African American friend called Lyn seated on a barstool in the Midwest, who told me that I was ‘fighting the caste system.’ I lived and survived, and after 9/11 and the Iraq war, I joined the queues of bearded folk who were asked the silliest questions, and detained in the most absurd circumstances while flying in and out of the US. 

Like all colonials dreaming and writing in English, I began yearning for England (even some Americans suffer from this syndrome). I spent two years preparing and securing specific scholarships for doctoral study administered by the British government and the University of London, and I landed at Heathrow in September 2005, armed with two suitcases and a bag. 

After immigration, I was ushered into a line of passengers with third world passports, all of whom had to go through medical tests; the fear of disease and contamination by the other still exists. In a flash of inspiration, I told the guardians of the land that I was Indian, but I’d lived in America for seven years. I wasn’t a stray dog—no, I was more of a pet poodle. ‘You lived in America!’ they gasped. I didn’t have to stand in a queue. I was free to enter the city gates.

As we commemorate the 70th anniversary of Indian independence, and as Britain reckons with its own sense of self in times of Brexit, there is much talk of the decline of the West and the rise of the East. In India, a new, muscular form of hyper-capitalism married with the rise of the Hindu right is asserting itself—cheered on and supported by much of the Indian diaspora in the UK and the US. The reaction to historical humiliation is to wear the mask of the coloniser. Thump your chests, make a noise, say with pride that India, despite its grotesque social problems, is an emerging power. 

V.S Naipaul’s million mutinies mutate to a billion shocks to the system. India’s version of the new world disorder slouches towards Varanasi to be born. Meanwhile, the West is shutting its doors, building walls and fences, retreating from a necessary internationalism. The dictatorship of the media ensures that we make snap judgements about diverse peoples without actually knowing them. Communities are in conflict, and everyone, if the news is to be believed, feels under siege.

In this environment, all we have left are stories, stories we tell each other, myths that we make as a way not only to negotiate the traumas of the past, but also to remind each other that we are living, breathing bodies, bodies that cry and bleed and laugh, not holograms and projections on 24 hour news feeds. In a world mediated by images and soundbites, perhaps the world of the theatre and performance can take us back to what it means to be human again.

My play, No Dogs, No Indians, is about crossing thresholds, claiming access, seeking personal dignity. Pritalata Waddedar, the forgotten female revolutionary at the heart of the play, reacts to colonial humiliation through violence. Shyamal Chatterjee, the brown sahib, the other protagonist, appropriates the culture of the coloniser. Both enact their own little tragedies.
 
In my own journey through gateways and borders, the empty space of the theatre remains the most inclusive, democratic, and celebratory of difference. In a world of walls meant to exclude, the theatre welcomes. 

The theatre is live. The theatre is real. The theatre is inclusive. Here we are, made of flesh and blood, sharing our stories with you. And you, the audience, will help us make this unrepeatable and vanishing moment almost holy.

No Dogs, No Indians plays at the Brighton Festival on May 17 and 18 2017. Tickets are available here.

This article was first published on openDemocracy.net.

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MK Raina is a well-known theatre director, actor and filmmaker, and a founder member of SAHMAT. In this account, recounted to Teesta Setalvad in 2005,  he describes his rediscovery and re-engagement with his home in the Kashmir Valley and his determination to forego the fear and the anger so as to reclaim and preserve a precious multi-cultural heritage.

I have just returned to my home in Noida after watching a play at the National School of Drama’s national festival. It was a Kashmiri entry; a production of Waiting for Godot directed by one of my students and judged one of the six best plays at the festival. The play’s director, Arshad Mushtaq is from the Valley and the entire caste is from rural Kashmir. They come from a place called Gandarbal outside Srinagar, and most of them are Kashmir peasants.
 

This account is a glimpse of the whole story – Of what is happening there, bit by bit. It is also the story of my re-engagement with my birthplace, my home. My parents lived there right up to the tumultuous 1990s when events overtook the people and the place. I left Kashmir as a student to study in Delhi, at the NSD. I stayed on as a theatre person and director, making documentary films and working in theatre. My parents and some of my extended family still lived in Srinagar at the time.
 

It was in the summer of 1990 that my return to Kashmir began, painfully. My brother-in-law suddenly called to say that my mother had suffered a serious haemorrhage. I flew to Srinagar immediately and went straight to the hospital. Though I had been following the developments in Kashmir, it was during my drive to the hospital that the reality of what the Valley had become hit me. Things were bad, there was shooting and counter-shooting on the roads, even just outside the hospital.
 

For days the three of us siblings were stuck in the government hospital where my mother’s condition remained serious, she had sunk into a coma. No proper medical attention was possible as doctors were deserting the hospital due to the atmosphere of violence and intimidation. We were desperate to take her to Delhi but the one local doctor attending to her said that she was in too precarious a condition, she could not be moved for at least three weeks.
 

The next few days were an endless string of anxious hours of waiting. My brother, my sister and I took turns in attending to our mother, watching for the relaxation of curfews to rush home and return. We had no time for more than a few hurried words to ensure that the basics were being looked after, that my father at home was all right. There were no beds for us at the hospital. We stayed by her side, lying on the cement slab by her bed just to stretch our backs. Two weeks passed that way.
 

My father, poor man, was at home all through this period. And then, as sudden as the haemorrhage itself, my mother passed away in the hospital just as we, my brother, sister and I were making plans to take her to Delhi. I returned to hospital one evening, aur dar bhi lagta tha, it was frightening once the sun was down, expecting to sit with her when my brother said to me, "It’s all over. She has gone."
 

The next few hours were traumatic. There was no ambulance available. The few people around in the hospital and fellow patients were very good to us, very sympathetic. But the skeletal staff at the hospital was worried; the army had taken over. And we were told that we just could not take our mother home. I only remember this outburst of feeling, "Arre hamare shahar mein gaadi kaise nikalne nahin denge?!" (How can we not be allowed to take out a vehicle in our own city?)
 

That night was desperate. It was Friday, January 25, 1990. The army had taken over. All roads had been sealed. Shoot-at-sight orders were issued the next day. Then the Peerbhoys got some cars and helped us; we could never repay that debt. We didn’t even know which route the driver took, but he managed to get us home. We had to sit in the pitch-dark in our house that night with our mother’s body.
 

Come morning, we had to deal with the last rites. I do not know what had gripped me that day but I was determined to get a dignified cremation for my mother. This meant walking down deserted streets, lined with CRPF forces, eerie in their silence. I simply had to approach the authorities to request a cremation for my mother. As I walked down alone, scraps of memories from my activist past struck me, helped me. A friend and comrade, Bobby had once described how she’d survived in Poland… one of her graphic descriptions which probably saved my life that day. She told me that often when she’d needed to go out during curfew she always held her hands up above her head as she walked. I remembered what she had said and did just that. Just kept on walking with my hands up to appeal to someone to let us take my mother’s body for cremation.
 

My father was worried, he said, "It doesn’t matter. Let’s wait. We can have the funeral rites the day after…" But I was determined and very emotional about the cremation. The second person from the security forces I encountered hurled filthy abuse at me. I just kept on moving, with my hands up. All I felt was, "My mother needs and deserves a funeral and I will do anything to get that for her."
 

I remember one Jat, a Haryanvi officer who demanded to know whether I had any orders to move, to come out. I appealed to him, "Ma ki nidhi ke liye nikla hoon, agni lagaani hai Ma ko…" (We have to complete the last rites of our mother)… It made no difference. By this time I had reached a police station and a BSF commandant came out and asked me what the matter was.
 

I made the same appeal to him. As I was speaking to him I realised that we did not even know where to get the kafan (shroud) from. The commandant and another BSF officer helped us with the arrangements and got us to the Ganesh temple between the first and second bridge in Srinagar city. The temple doors were open, so we could go in and bathe my mother. My brother and I, along with two cousins and one Muslim friend who had insisted on coming with us. It was after this ritual was over that I actually looked around and saw the city. It was a chilling sight. Srinagar had been completely sealed off. It was a city I had never seen. "Yeh mera shahar nahin tha, jis galiyon mein hamne masti bawal kiya tha" (It was not the city of my birth where we had frolicked and made mischief).
 

It was through this eerie Srinagar that our procession wound its way after leaving the temple, trying to reach the cremation ground. In a city sealed off there are no ordinary people about, only uniformed army men at every step and around every corner. Every 40 feet or so, we had to lift the shroud and show our mother’s face to those who patrolled the streets. As we passed, there were loud sounds, a bomb was thrown and we heard an explosion at a spot somewhere behind us. What was happening to Kashmir?
 

Finally we made our way to the ground where my mother was then cremated. It was a Muslim who cremated her, that is the beauty of Kashmir… By the time we had arrived there I had no emotions left, I was numb.
 

Then, we did not know how to get back home. Normally, one never takes the arthi (ashes) home but that day we had to. The earthen pot containing our mother’s ashes was our passport to return home safely. I spotted the police headquarters at Batmalu. I stopped the truck we were driving and said, "Help us get home." After that it was one wireless message after another, stopping at checkpoint after checkpoint before we got home. There, my 70 odd-year-old father, my sister and two nephews were waiting anxiously. We were stuck at home for days after that. Even my mama and mausi (maternal uncle, aunt) learnt of my mother’s death only seven-eight days later.

I could never accept the fact that there was nothing for me in Kashmir. Even today I don’t have a home there. So what? Srinagar city was home! I was a Srinagar city bum, why couldn’t I go back to my city?
 

After this tragedy, we were faced with another dilemma. My father did not want to leave in such tragic circumstances, but he could not stay alone either. He talked to his neighbours at length, persons from the mohalla (neighbourhood), because we had been living there from my great grandfather’s time. There was a lot of pain in those conversations. Our dearest friends, our closest ones were helpless in the face of what was happening. Safety or comfort could not be assured. That is when my father left for Jammu. He never could go back.
 

From Jammu he came to our home in Noida. He was a fiercely independent man, as fit as a fiddle, he walked six kilometres every day. He used to be a National Conference party worker. He had his home, his dentist’s practice, his friends around the neighbourhood. My parents were very self-sufficient.
 

But once my father left Kashmir, he started suffering from hypertension. One day he told me, "I am too old." When he passed away some years later, my son Anto (Anant) remarked, "Baba did not go now. Baba had already gone." That is when I realised my son had grown up. He knew my father had never been the same after he left the Valley. Ever since 1990 our clan has been scattered. Some are in Jammu, some in East UP, others in Rajasthan, some in Pune. Our property is all gone. We had to sell it for a pittance a couple of years ago. Our children our grown now.
 

For me this period in 1990 worked as a catalyst. I could never accept the fact that there was nothing for me in Kashmir. Even today I don’t have a home there. So what? Srinagar city was home! I was a Srinagar city bum, why couldn’t I go back to my city? Soon I had the opportunity. In 1992, when I was working with Siddharth Kak on the North India section of the cultural television serial, Surabhi, we needed to shoot in Kashmir. I was the obvious choice for the unit since I knew every street in Srinagar. When our unit landed at the airport we were received by state security forces, there for our protection. The minute we arrived and security personnel joined us, I realised that we had made a mistake. I knew then that this was not the way I should have returned to my city. I went back to Delhi the very next day.
 

Then, about six years ago, I began the real journey back. Chances opened up through a PTI television series on Kashmir planned from a cultural perspective and without any propaganda. We depicted Kashmiris any and everywhere, inside and out of Kashmir.
 

When I first went back, I didn’t know where I would stay. There was Arshad (whose play is just being staged at NSD) whom I had met earlier. I had asked him to pick me up at the airport, not knowing whether he would come. He did. I still remember his smile when he greeted me! For 15 minutes, I couldn’t move… For 15 minutes my bag went round and round the conveyor belt. In those 15 minutes I made up my mind. I told myself, no security this time. I also remembered a little hotel with a kebab joint, Ruby Hotel on Lambert Lane. As I came out and Arshad greeted me I said we would stay at Ruby Hotel. "That’s it!" he said.
 

I also went to the Dastagir Sab shrine near downtown Srinagar. In days past, my mother used to give me Rs. 11 whenever I passed that shrine and she would say, "Ya Peer Dastagir, Allah theek karenge" (All will be well by the grace of Saint Dastagir and the Almighty Allah). I went there, offered Rs. 11, received sheere, you know, the round hard bits of sugar? I got five-six of those and then told Arshad that now we should start meeting people. We met writers, poets, hoteliers, businessmen and many others. I was lucky we were moving around fearlessly.
 

Then some years later I began a project filming heritage sights in Kashmir. The day my father died I had a nightmare that frightened me… All the beautiful shrines of the Valley, all my childhood images would one day just disappear. I didn’t want the Shah Hanadan shrine, its beautiful architecture, to just disappear. My mausi lived opposite Shah Hanadan. Whenever we visited her we would bow our heads low in respect to the shrine. As children we were told a story. That Shah Hanadan and our other beautiful structures were all made from one forest of wood each. Imagine if they all disappeared! I had this fear that they might go. Charar-e-Sharief had been gutted in 1995. In 1996, on one visit, I remember calling my wife Anju and telling her that I wanted to record these heritage sites so at least our children, the younger ones who had never seen Kashmir, could soak in this heritage. She was very supportive. As I began shooting, temples, mosques, dargahs, my own fear dissolved. The only condition my family insisted on was that I should phone them every evening.
 

While I was shooting, the evenings would depress me because then the shroud fell on Srinagar. Everything stopped moving. Curfew was on. The Residency on Lambert Lane used to be the hub of activity. There was a coffee-house there. It served a lousy cup of coffee but it was the cultural hub of Srinagar, the spot where all the great intellectuals of Kashmir, from the world of literature, song, theatre and poetry, met. Now not a soul could be seen as evening fell. One evening, some time in 1997-1998, I found myself in tears for there were no faces at the coffee-house to remember.
 

In Delhi, NSD and theatre was my life. Around this time, someone suggested that I do a play on Chhattisgarh. Why Chhattisgarh, I remember demanding. I said I wanted to do a play on Kashmir. This began another journey back to the Valley.
 

During my earlier stays in the Valley, shooting for films and documentaries, I had re-established contact with many old colleagues. One of them, Shafi saab had through INTACH already conceived of CHECK (Centre for Kashmiri heritage and environment). We decided on an official collaboration through an NSD workshop in Srinagar. We, Shafi Pandit and I met senior bureaucrats to solicit space for 30 people to live and have a residential theatre workshop. Finally, we were given space at the agricultural university, Sher-e-Kashmir. The registrar was wonderful; he had seen me on television and showed me a beautiful bungalow, with a forest as backdrop. An empty hostel would provide the rooms. It was just the place I wanted.
 

I advertised for participants in the local papers. I received no responses on the first day. One evening, two days later, a student from Baramullah came. Within seven days, I had students from Sopore, and Gandarbal as well. This was what they needed. Young people needed this space for expression. A residential workshop of this kind gave them a welcome release from the lives they led, or had been forced to lead.
 

The workshop was completely self-sufficient and Gandhian in principle. It was cook, clean and work. It was a very tiny place but set in lovely surroundings. A garden in an apple orchard scattered with chinar trees. The workshop lasted four full weeks. We performed theatre, saw several films on video and invited Kashmiri intellectuals for discussions at specific workshops.
 

That experience remains the foundation of what I am still trying to do in Kashmir. It was a small beginning. You know, to climb on to a horse and ride you first need the four-legged structure to get onto the horse in the first place? For that you have to build that structure. We are trying to do that so that we can begin climbing on to the horse.
 

I was 18 when I left Kashmir. When I returned in 1990 when my mother died, I was married with two children. There was much to learn about the years in between. I can only say that now, with this first workshop, the bottle has been uncorked.
 

I am not a hero. We do not need heroes. We need ordinary people who act as catalysts to re-start the normal everyday processes of living, healing and forgiving. My deepest regret about Kashmir and the state of affairs there is the utter failure of Indian civil society when there was a crisis at hand. I am active in the anti-communal movement and often felt frustrated and alienated when there was little or no attempt by radical activists to relate to the ongoing crisis in Kashmir.
 

A cultural awakening is a must for a genuine resurgence of health and vigour in Kashmir. You know the education of the Kashmiris has been ruined? They have forgone their rich heritage by dumping the Kashmiri language and have adopted a very inferior kind of Urdu. It was and is my endeavour to bring the Kashmiri component of culture to these children of the Valley. Along with the cream of Kashmiri intellectuals, we spoke of the richness of Kashmiri culture to the young. Rehman Rahi, the renowned Kashmiri poet, spoke to them on what Kashmir was before Islam; he spoke of the Buddhist influence on Kashmir, the influence of Shaivite Hinduism on the Valley. The Kashmiri Pandit scholar, Ganjoo saab, who knows the old Kashmiri script, spoke of the evolution of the language. We had Abhinav Gupta, a scholar of Sanskrit, giving his commentary on Natya Shastra. The whole impetus was to communicate to the young what you are, what have Kashmiris made of this land? They were told Kashmiri short stories, wonderful stories. If I can ever raise the resources I will make a film on one of these stories… they beat even Kafka in their craft and depth.

I am not a hero. We do not need heroes. We need ordinary people who act as catalysts to re-start the normal everyday processes of living, healing and forgiving
 

We developed performances and also put up an exhibition of our paperwork. At the end, we performed to an audience. Five years ago, after God alone knows how many years, there was a public performance at the Tagore Theatre. This whole cultural experiment with residential theatre workshops set the pace and with every workshop we found more people. Soon we were running short of space at the first location.
 

In the second year, we performed a play with new people. By the third workshop the university had run out of space, so we moved our workshop to an indoor stadium near the Passport Office (which incidentally was attacked in early 2005) and held our rehearsals there. This time, instead of directing the plays myself, I told Arshad and Hakim Javed to do so. We had a two-day festival at the end of the workshop. Today they are making their directorial debut at the NSD in Delhi!
 

There is much insularity within Jammu and Kashmir, be it in Ladakh, Jammu or the Valley. I believe this insularity needs to be addressed. One way to do this is through cultural resurgence. The work is like aachar lagaana (making pickles). You have to work at it for a long time before the end product results. Slowly you can earn trust. I know they are my own people. I have to win them back.
 

My daughter Aditi accompanied me on one of my trips back. She was studying the impact of violence on children. She insisted on moving around on her own, visiting schools, orphanages and interacting with local activists. On a visit to the Chashmeshahi Lake she witnessed the humiliation that Arshad and Javed had to suffer when they were stopped and searched by security forces. I used to insist that things were normal in my Kashmir. She turned and said to me, "How can you say things are normal? There is fear and terror." My own child opened my eyes to another dimension of the tragedy. Children.
 

The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation gave me a small grant to work with children whose lives had become a living hell. There was no education worth the name, either. As a result, we had a residential camp in Jammu in February last year. Srinagar kids were brought to Jammu camps. There were 40 kids from Srinagar and 15 from Jammu. Both groups had seen violence. They were like tense little birds; these were children who had seen trauma. They wanted to avoid contact. Many mothers volunteered at the residential camp. We spent 12 days at the camp together.
 

I had each child’s case history with me. There was anxiety and concern about the experiment. What would 12 days out of their homes mean? There would be Hindus and Muslims staying together? Would this cause more pain than healing?
 

We proved the sceptics wrong. Nothing untoward happened. If any child was upset, he or she went to one of the ‘aunties’ who were organisers as well. These aunties were also mothers. The children stayed awake late into the night, sharing experiences, whispering fears. Kids moved into one another’s rooms. They held hands, slowly. The division crumbled… As the camp came to an end they all howled for an hour because they had to leave.
 

Suddenly they had all become part of a larger family. Last year the same children attended the camp again and some new children also joined. These included migrant children. Camp mothers of migrant Pandit children came to Srinagar. We had to keep a daroga, a watchman, since we were near the lake, but it was a tremendous experience.
 

There are just so many stories. One woman, Usha took us to her home or what had once been her home. Initially, she didn’t want to go to her home near Pahalgam, she couldn’t handle it. When we visited the temple complex at Pahalgam, however, she began to get restless. As we approached her home, "Mera ghar peeche rah jayega," that’s my home, she said. Then, when she finally did go, she found her home intact, her mohalla intact. She met persons from the neighbourhood. Though she was torn when we left, I saw a different face now. Usha’s face held less fear. More confidence.
 

The year before last, I took Sanjay, a Pandit from a village, back with me. He works in film and television as a freelancer in Delhi. When we reached Srinagar, he was frightened, paranoid. Red in the face, he sensed a policewoman staring at him. She turned out to be an old classmate who came up to him, "Tu Sanjay hai na?" (You are Sanjay, right?) They were meeting after 12 or 14 years. She insisted that Sanjay go to her house and meet her husband and children.
 

He was very tense on the streets of Srinagar. Arshad and I, and the others took Sanjay to Lal Chowk and other familiar haunts. We felt that we all had something precious that we needed to fight to reclaim and preserve. As we took him around Srinagar, we reached the Cheel Bhawani temple, 20 km away, which we were also filming. As we neared the temple, he became more and more tense. The symbol of his faith in his homeland was bringing back all kinds of memories. I told Arshad to take special care of him. Inside the temple premises it was as if a chain inside him had snapped. He started sobbing like a baby. Arshad hugged him and took him to the bench. They sat there talking and talking and talking… I just thought, "Yeh Bharat milan ho raha hai" (This is meeting, Indian-style).
 

And then do you know what we did? We asked him if he wanted to do a puja and he said yes. We then went outside to the man selling earthen lamps. In Kashmir, he too is a Muslim. Despite years of violence, this Muslim was there and he had kept the tradition alive. His name was Ghulam Mohammed, a poor peasant. We asked him how many diyas he had; he had 80 or 81. We bought every single one of them, lit them all. Then we performed the aarti for Sanjay as bhajans were sung in the Cheel Bhawani temple, Sanjay, Arshad, Javed and I. Then we ate the prashad (offering), tears flowing down our cheeks. This was Sanjay’s therapy. Sanjay continues to go back to Kashmir today. He is now going back to shoot a story of an ex terrorist who used to be his classmate…
 

Who can understand this reality? Ek Kashmiri Pandit ki puja hi nahin ho sakti jab tak mitti ke bartan – joh Mussalman banata hai —woh na ho. (A Kashmiri Pandit’s prayer ceremony is impossible if the earthen vessels – made by a Muslim – aren’t there.) My father used to say Janm se marne tak Mussalman ka saath hai, from birth to death, Muslims are with us. We have to re-build a future on this rich tradition of multi-culturalism.
 

I now have 150 friends in Kashmir from the world of theatre. Twenty are in Delhi performing right now. For me, I know that my Kashmir is there.
 

Initially, when I started going back I was, for them, a strange nut. But after my experience in 1990, I was sure of two things. Fear feeds more fear and anger fuels more anger. But if you hold out your hand then the fear and anger dissolve and the healing begins. By God’s grace that has happened with me.
 

(As narrated to Teesta Setalvad).

Archived from Communalism Combat, January  2005 Year 11    No.104, Cover Story 2

The post My hometown appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In May this year, the Indian People’s Theatre Association completed 65 years. There was a gathering of litterateurs and theatre people celebrating the event and discussing the growth and achievements of the unique organisation. A large part of the evening was spent in nostalgia, listing the luminaries associated with IPTA, the great plays staged by them reaching out to the common citizen as opposed to the theatre going elite, and so on. There was a small note of self-criticism as well, a brave admission of the fact that while IPTA may not have lost its initial purpose of putting up socially relevant plays, it had perhaps failed to keep up with the times.  

Notwithstanding constant accusations of being old-fashioned, mediocre and unable to reach out to contemporary urban audiences, IPTA still remains the oldest and only organisation of its kind – one that functions like a democratic community of like-minded people rather than a personality driven group, the kind that dies down once its leader is no longer active. IPTA has a presence in 22 states of India with more than 12,000 members in its various units.

IPTA was set up by KA Abbas, Anil de Silva, Ali Sardar Jafri, Dr Bhabha and Dada Sharmalkar during the Quit India movement in 1942, when a group of writers, artistes and activists felt the need to reach out to the masses with nationalistic (the independence movement was at its peak) and progressive ideas through drama, music and dance. IPTA workers fanned out all over the country, performing in remote villages, outside factories and in bastis on makeshift stages.  

The association not only went on to become a significant cultural institution, it also had a great influence on the cinema of that period for several people associated with the group also worked in Hindi films, including writers and poets belonging to the even older Progressive Writers’ Association established in 1936.  

The draft resolution of the IPTA conference in 1943 stated: "The immediate problems facing the people are external aggression by the fascist hordes who are the deadliest enemies of freedom and culture; internal repression by an alien government which seeks to hold our people in subjection and prevent them from organising an effective defence of their homeland; rapid disintegration of the entire economic life of our people and particularly the havoc wrought on the morale and the health of our people by the shortage of food and other essential articles; and lastly the absence of sufficient unity among the people’s forces which alone can compel the imperialist to retire, stop the economic disintegration of the country and defeat the fascist aggressors."

Important among the early plays was Navanna (New Harvest), about the 1943 Bengal famine, and Yeh Kiska Khoon, Gandhi Aur Goonda, Zubeida, Basti, Danga and Mera Gaon – all based on social problems of the time.  

A member of the group for several years, Bengali composer and poet, the late Salil Chowdhury said in an interview that IPTA had a "tremendous impact on society, a lot of things that are available today were made possible by the contribution IPTA made. The IPTA cultural movement and the peasant movement were mainly responsible for the rights that the peasants and workers enjoy today. The kinds of rights that a peasant couldn’t enjoy even 20 years ago, they have got those rights these days, both the peasants and the workers, thanks to such movements… If we staged a play among the peasants, they would take care of us, provide food and raise money for us." 

For a while after independence, IPTA lost its focus but then regrouped in various places and continued the work started by its pioneers. Some IPTA plays that are still remembered by old-timers include Kafan (based on the story by Munshi Premchand), Africa Jawaan Pareshan, Lal Ghulab Ki Wapsi, Ek Chadar Maili Si, Election Ka Ticket, Bhagat Singh, Mahanirvan, Bakri and Sufaid Kundali. 

Plays such as Shatranj Ke Mohre, Ek Aur Dronacharya, Moteram Ka Satyagrah, Aakhri Shama, Tajmahal Ka Tender, have lived on for years even as newer plays like Raat, Kashmakash, Chaubees Ghante, Sarphire and Ek Baar Phir did not find much patronage among today’s entertainment-seeking audiences.

However, IPTA’s current general secretary, Shaili Sathyu feels that comparisons between the old and the new are not quite fair, as issues have changed from the forties to the present day. "What we need to do today is not just reach out to people who agree with us anyway but to put thoughts into the heads of people who don’t go by our democratic beliefs… as long as there is segregation of people for any reason – caste, religion, money or gender – theatre can be used to mobilise opinion and make an attempt to uplift the marginalised."

Current causes like communalism, farmer suicides and loss of idealism in today’s youth may not have found their way into IPTA plays the way issues like corruption, political and bureaucratic ineptitude, and rural oppression did in the past. But in Mumbai, as elsewhere, IPTA still has a dedicated set of workers who keep the group going. Attempts are made to reach young people through the children’s wing, IPTA Balmanch, and the Inter-Collegiate Drama Competition, an institution in itself, which was started in 1972 and has been held every year for the past 35 years.  

Towards the end of the year IPTA will host a three-week long All India People’s Theatre Festival to showcase talent from the group’s units across the country. This may well be a good time to regroup, gather strength and plunge into the deteriorating cultural scene with ideals refreshed. A group that survives 65 years could, perhaps, aim for immortality.

Playgroups

"When we catch children young to make them better human beings through entertainment and games, plays and songs, we transform ourselves also. We receive the innocence of children in our soul and feel happy."

– Ismat Chughtai’s message for IPTA Balmanch in 1984

IPTA Balmanch, the children’s wing of the Indian People’s Theatre Association, was started with a view to inculcate in young and growing minds a sense of appreciation and understanding for the performing arts.

It all began with a theatre workshop production of Munshi Premchand’s short story, Idgah, which premiered at Prithvi Theatre on September 16, 1984. Idgah was adapted as a play by Ranjeet Kapoor and directed by Madhu Malti. The play featured over 30 child artistes including Rajeshwari Sachdev and Shaad Ali among others. Balmanch’s second production was PL Deshpande’s Naya Gokul, also directed by Madhu Malti.

IPTA Balmanch was instrumental in the early years of artistes and theatre personalities like Lubna Salim, Rajeshwari Sachdev, Sagar Arya, Shaili Sathyu and others.

Balmanch has organised theatre and music workshops over the past few years and is planning to make this a regular activity for its young members. In 2006, IPTA Balmanch premiered Gulzar’s Agar Aur Magar, directed by Salim Arif. The play has also been staged at the Jashne Bachpan 2006, National School of Drama, New Delhi, and at the Mumbai Theatre Festival 2007 in Mumbai.

IPTA Mumbai hopes that it can continue its efforts in sensitising children about the world around them through the medium of theatre and performing arts.

http://www.iptamumbai.org/bal.html

Archived from Communalism Combat, August-September 2007, Anniversary Issue (14th), Year 14    No.125, India at 60 Free Spaces, Theatre

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