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The Farcical Mosaic:

The Changing Masks of Political
Theatre in Contemporary India
Darren 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 a
new challenge in trying to find ways to “out-farce” a political arena that already has
become inherently farcical. There are two special challenges addressed here. The first
comes from the state of Kerala in southwestern India, where a self-styled progressive state
government 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 or
folk models of theatre to voice their critiques. Since the national government in Delhi
has 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 forces
against 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 of
California, Berkeley.

In her rich and moving memoir of India from partition in 1947

to the present, Qamar Azad Hashmi, mother of slain theatre-activist
Safdar Hashmi, lamented the tendency of revolutionary and politically
active artists, particularly those on the left, to allow themselves to be
co-opted into the central areas of power against which they once
resisted. During the freedom struggle, she notes:

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

Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 18, no. 2 (Fall 2001). © 2001 by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved.
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 175

societies were founded to bring the common people and the artists
together in one place; the suffering of the people was articulated
through the theatre and forcefully made known to the people; those
who participated in the struggle and those who were their leaders—
before partition they used this entire array of means. [But] several
members of the left-wing groups who had participated in the freedom
struggle and who had spent time in British jails—after India became
free, they accepted copper plaques and became the right hand of the
ruling establishment, and thus in accepting payment for their
sacrifices 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 recently
departed British officials. Those who had only moments before con-
sidered themselves freedom fighters and revolutionaries began to ossify
into a new establishment that to those outside the corridors of power
began to look disturbingly similar to the old order against which they
had struggled. Safdar Hashmi, left-wing activist and leader of the street
theatre group Jana Natya Manch, knew well the power of theatre to
make a political statement and also the lengths to which a government
would 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 at
the hands of a “mob attack” allegedly orchestrated by the ruling Con-
gress Party. 1
Although Safdar Hashmi’s home theatre, so to speak, was the
city of Delhi and its environs, the street theatre tradition of which he
was a vociferous advocate is by no means confined to the capital city
but extends into other regions and other cities of South Asia as well.2
By and large, political theatre in South Asia tends to draw its inspira-
tion from ideological sources that are opposed to the “center”—pri-
marily, but not necessarily, from the political left. In most of South
Asia, as elsewhere, the political left is identified with Marxist-Leninist
parties of one sort or other, and the rhetoric of their manifestos, like
the dialogue of their plays, is replete with calls for continuing “the rev-
olution.” Theoretically “the revolution” is the event in which the out-
sider party—the leftist party—takes power on behalf of the common
people and political and social justice is finally served. While Qamar
Azad Hashmi’s polemic is directed at those of the political left who
have 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
176 Zook

has posed a different sort of challenge for the theatre activist: what
happens to political theatre when the revolution becomes the state?
Here I want to focus on the increasingly convoluted ways in
which this question has been addressed in contemporary India. The
general trends of political theatre in India are examined here with
particular emphasis on a recent critical and controversial drama that
satirizes the ruling Communist Party in one “revolutionary” state in
southwestern India—the state of Kerala. Civic Chandran’s Ninnal Aare
Kammunistaaki (Whom Did You Make a Communist?; 1995) indicates
the direction toward which political or revolutionary theatre has been
pushed both in India and elsewhere in South Asia. Political practice
and rhetoric have become so comical and absurd that left-wing, social-
ist, and “realist” dramas, if they are true to their task of representing
the revolution as it is, must unwittingly and perhaps unwillingly tend
toward a theatre of revolutionary farce (or farcical revolution)— or,
indeed, a theatre in which farce and realism are indistinguishable. The
ossification of the revolutionary state in Kerala is paralleled through-
out India by the pervasive sense of decaying nationalism out of which
has emerged—to make things worse — a retreat to fundamentalist and
culturally chauvinist governments (such as the Bharatiya Janata Party
and the Shiv Sena). The primary weapon that such governments have
used 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 is
boxed in by circumstance: there is the discomfiting similarity between
the British and the Indian National Congress and between the centrist
(Congress) and “revolutionary” or “fundamentalist” governments. On
the other side it is boxed in by rhetoric: how can one evoke a people’s
theatre when everyone claims to speak for the people? As a result,
political theatre has tended increasingly toward cynical satire and an
involuted 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 increasingly
influenced by fundamentalist, or at least militantly nationalistic, forces.
At the state level— and here Kerala will serve as the prime example—
instead of revolutionary slogans, impassioned rhetoric, and socialist
realism, political theatre has collapsed in on itself through the pon-
derous weight of its own ideological shortcomings in the face of a very
different and less inspiring social “reality.” The result in each case is an
incestuous lexicon of self-reverence and self-reference that renders
the idea of political theatre almost meaningless but at the same time
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 177

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 Beyond

It is in some ways a misnomer to refer to leftist theatre as polit-
ical theatre because in some sense all theatre is political—just 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 of
cosmic proportions that makes one wonder just how wholesome such
traditional values really are.3 Although modern theatre in Kerala and
elsewhere 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 similarly
artificial distinctions —between political ideologies or cultural prac-
tices, for instance—in 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 parallel
emergence of new ideas in theatre and new ideas in politics starting
roughly from the 1870s: “political theatre” as it exists today in Kerala is
in 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 Theatre
in Calcutta and the staging of Dinabandhu Mitra’s polemical Bengali-
language play Nil Darpan (The Blue Mirror). Mitra’s play, which high-
lights the exploitation of agricultural laborers in eastern India by
British indigo planters, was initially both a commercial success—it was
the 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; others
thought it sacrificed literary merit for political sensation and resented
its 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 in
the aftermath of the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876 — a piece of
censorial legislation issued in part as a response to Mitra’s play and
designed to mute the critical power of theatrical performance—
pushed 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
178 Zook

mythological subject matter. Frustrated by the harsh restrictions, many

playwrights turned their attention to exposing the corruption within
Hindu society and addressed a host of social injustices. Common
themes included the immolation of widows on the funeral pyres of
their husbands, child marriages, the dowry system, the restrictive role
of women at home and in society and politics, and love marriages, to
name but a few of the more popular issues of the day that were
addressed on the stage. [Richmond 1990, 389]

Richmond’s characterization, while generally accurate, is also incom-

plete. For the new directions toward which political theatre veered
were not altogether random or even underground, nor were they nec-
essarily a direct product of the act. A new center of political gravity was
already forming at this time that would permanently change both the
politics and the theatrical aesthetics of South Asia; this new center of
gravity would ultimately be given the general name of “development.”
As political theatre was gradually reoriented toward issues of
development and social reform in the latter decades of the nineteenth
century, so too were many political rulers following the newly laid
paths to these issues, primarily for the same reason: the focus on social
reform allowed the political ruler, just as it allowed the political drama-
tist, to be both radical and orthodox at the same time. This can be seen
clearly in the fate of Dinabandhu Mitra. Although his play was origi-
nally banned, only a short while later the British awarded Mitra with
an official title (Rai Bahadur) and began to patronize his play as a fine
example of “native” theatre and exactly the type of politically driven
public message that the British needed in order to advocate social
reform. In other words, a play that was originally intended to subvert
the smugness of British rule ended up being applauded by the very
group it was designed to critique. Here we have the first level of absur-
dity to be dealt with in modern political theatre in Kerala and all over
India: radical street performers of the present—as well as those who,
as Qamar Azad Hashmi so acerbically noted, accepted copper plaques
from the establishment—can both trace their political and theatrical
lineage to the same source, a source that is simultaneously radical and
orthodox.
The ideas of development and social reform were exceptionally
important in Kerala, and historically Kerala has become known as
something of a model of successful development.5 But the develop-
ment model of Kerala was not built merely by the British in Malabar
and the princely rulers of Travancore and Cochin. It was also built by
a radical opposition of nationalist and communist politicians that
emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century and claimed to
resist the entrenched powers of orthodoxy—even though they were
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 179

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 temple
entry for untouchables, public health, education, caste prejudice, and
the status of women, to name just a few (Menon 1994). The political
battles revealed several fault lines in the political terrain of Kerala—
established royal rulers versus “new” politicians; nationalists (Congress)
versus communists; low caste versus high caste— and while political
violence was certainly part of the “drama” of the period, the rhetorical
side of the debate brought new modes of expression and linguistic
arguments 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 was
in fact a very rich political stew, and by the 1940s every major political
group in southwestern India—the British, the maharajas, the untouch-
ables, the Congress, and the communists, among others—were all
working on what was in essence the same political program of reform.
The only thing that was radical was the rhetoric used by each to claim
this program as its own.
By the time we get to the decades straddling independence, the
1940s and 1950s, the methods of popularizing and claiming ideas had
become much more sophisticated than cheaply printed street plays and
pamphlets— and the political stakes in doing so much higher. The
“development state” that would become Kerala was beginning to take
shape, although who built it and who owned it remained unsettled.
Much of the debate took place through the social drama of the period
and also through carefully orchestrated “political theatre.” While the
Congress Party was trying to wrest the claim of self-rule and national-
ism out of the hands of British and traditional (princely) rulers, the
Communist Party was busy staging secular and radical processions in
which deities were replaced with hammer and sickle flags. Symbols
were being continuously made and remade, and histories written and
rewritten, 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 revolution
hung in the air. Other words were in the air as well—the words of
politically active playwrights vying for politically loyal audiences. Out
of this political and dramatic mayhem, one voice was to resonate
clearly and suddenly, a voice that would literally change the course of
Kerala’s political and theatrical history: the voice of Thoppil Bhasi.
180 Zook

The Making of Thoppil Bhasi

To understand the concerns addressed in Civic Chandran’s play,
it is first necessary to examine briefly the life and work of Thoppil
Bhasi—in particular the play from which Chandran draws for his farce
and which made Bhasi so extraordinarily famous in Kerala’s modern
political and theatrical history: Ninnal Enne Kammunistaaki (You Made
Me a Communist) (Bhasi 1976). Bhasi wrote this play while in hiding
—the new Congress government effectively banned the Communist
Party when it came to power in 1947— and the spirit of the play is
drawn from the “drama” of the attempted Communist uprising at Sur-
nad (in present-day Kerala) in 1949 in which five policemen were
killed, 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 it
popular appeal, songs were added by O. N. V. Kurup, in whose house
Bhasi had taken shelter. After its initial performance, the Congress
government responded first by breaking up performances and chasing
actors out of town and then by banning performances altogether— a
depressing dress rehearsal for the later action against Safdar Hashmi.
But the play’s popular appeal proved too great for the censors, and it
became one of those works of art that appeared in the right place at
exactly the right moment, capturing and creating the spirit of an era
at 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 state
power in the elections of 1957, stemmed largely from the popularity
of Bhasi’s 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 as
hungry for more land as he is for sexual trysts with the young women
of the village, wants to take the land of a certain Paramu Pillai, father
of Communist Party member and worker Gopalan. Gopalan is in love
with Sumam, the daughter of Kesavan Nayar, and Kesavan Nayar lusts
after Mala, a beautiful young girl of the Pulaya (low- caste) community,
whom he intends to seduce and dishonor. Although Mala is in love with
Gopalan, that love remains unrequited. Kesavan Nayar produces falsi-
fied papers to gain title to Paramu Pillai’s lands. With no other possi-
ble recourse—Kesavan Nayar is connected to the Congress Party and
is in fact trying to marry off Sumam to a Congress Party supporter—
Paramu Pillai turns to the communists for help. Through agitations,
demonstrations, and processions, the communists ultimately galvanize
enough popular support to gain concessions from big landlords such
as Kesavan Nayar to protect the small landowners and tenants. Gopalan
and Sumam promise to marry one another, and Mala fades to a
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 181

pathetic demise and eventual death (which becomes significant in

Civic Chandran’s play). The play ends with Paramu Pillai proclaiming
to the young communists who fought on his behalf “You have made
me 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 play’s popularity, not everyone in Kerala was a
Communist. Indeed, opposition to the play and its simplistic story was
voiced in other plays that became increasingly farcical. In 1953, Kesava
Dev wrote a play titled Nanippo Kammunistavum! (Now I Will Become
a Communist!), a satirical response to Bhasi’s play. In Kesava Dev’s
play, characters threaten to join the Communist Party for the slightest
insult or incident—in one case for dropping a teacup. The play is not
without a serious message, however. Along with the rest of Kesava Dev’s
farces and plays, it constitutes a warning against the type of politicking
described earlier: the claim and counterclaim to the spoils of political
victory, for example, or the rush to outdo the other parties in making
increasingly outrageous claims as to the ownership of various agendas
for action. When Dev parodies one of the landlords who becomes a
communist in order to evict his tenants in Nanippo Kammunistavum!,
he is foreshadowing some of the criticisms that appear in Civic Chan-
dran’s play. From the perspective of “the people,” revolutionary and
reactionary 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 criticized
Communist 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 for
social issues, and one of his best plays, Asvameetam (The Horse Sacri-
fice), published in 1962, deals with leprosy, then little discussed, and
the issue of untouchability and “outcasting.” It is of some interest to
note that The Horse Sacrifice would not have had such an impact were it
not 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 emerge
in Bhasi’s 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 or
worse, 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
182 Zook

central critical voice in the political theatre of Kerala. In short, to avoid

co - optation by the revolutionary state, political theatre had to bring
out the revolutionary clowns, so to speak— only this time, the clowns
meant serious business.

Civic Chandran and the Reincarnation of Thoppil Bhasi

Right from the start of Civic Chandran’s play, it is clear that the
icons and symbols of the revolution are in for a thrashing and Chan-
dran is going to approach his subject with a nothing-is-sacred
demeanor. The prologue begins with the sound of Communist Party
songs (of the type that were written for Thoppil Bhasi’s 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 evoke
either a feeling of nostalgia or an implication of living in the past. As
the curtain rises, Mala enters carrying the red flag of the revolution.
She is in a graveyard, surrounded by “martyrs,” and the juxtaposition
of the glory songs and the somber gravestones could not be more star-
tling. Slowly the other characters from Thoppil Bhasi’s You Made Me a
Communist! enter. The first to speak is Paramu Pillai—who, it will be
recalled, speaks proudly at the end of Bhasi’s play that he has been
made into a communist, just as the characters march off with the flag
held high. In the prologue of Civic Chandran’s play, Paramu Pillai, shy
and humbled, is surrounded by the graves of those who paid such a
terribly high price to make him a communist: “All of you have made
me into a communist, haven’t you?” he ponders, adding weakly and
diffidently, “That is what I am.” When Kesavan Nayar, his supposed
foe, comforts him by saying that times change, Paramu Pillai responds
by saying he would like to lead a procession with the flag, an ironic
statement considering the morose setting. Finally Mala speaks, and
Chandran’s new take on Bhasi and the whole idea of the revolution
becomes clear. Standing alone on the stage after the other characters
have 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 . . . but
this time we lost.” She is unable to finish and breaks into tears. As Mala
cries, however, a shadowy figure appears smoking the cheap kind of
cigarette called bidi. When the figure speaks, it becomes clear that this
is none other than Thoppil Bhasi himself, back from the dead. “Mala,”
he says, “I have come to see you again.” The figure of Bhasi then
announces 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 to
pause and examine some of the symbolic and thematic issues that have
been introduced since they are not only very rich but suggest why
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 183

Chandran’s play was so controversial when it appeared. First, we have

the image of the graveyard—itself a disturbing setting and a scene that
(as Chandran points out later in the play) no one in the revolution
wants 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 spirits
who died unjust or unnatural deaths.8 Here Chandran is implying that
the revolution is dead or that the martyrs are “restless” because a failed
revolution has rendered their deaths unjust. Second, there is the
image of the red flag—probably the most prominent image of Bhasi’s
original play—which Chandran wastes no time deflating as an empty
symbol of failed revolution. Much of Chandran’s play is devoted to
rewriting the symbol of the flag and the “heroic” processions in which
it is carried; after he deflates and then ridicules it, he ultimately
redeems it and appropriates it for “the people” by taking it out of the
hands of the Communist Party leadership. Third, there is the charac-
ter of Mala, who, as we will see, is brought back from the dead and
shown to be the “true hero” of Bhasi’s play. (Paramu Pillai is com-
monly thought of as the hero.) Chandran’s message here is that what
is important about the revolution is not what it made—for example, a
communist out of Paramu Pillai—but rather what it forgot: in this
case, Mala and her (low-caste) community. Finally, lest anyone be
ruffled by this disparaging of the “holy text” of Bhasi’s original play,
Chandran takes the outrageous step of bringing Bhasi back from the
grave to lend legitimacy to Chandran’s satirical interpretation.9 Just as
Mala has reclaimed the red flag, Chandran has reclaimed the spirit of
Bhasi to take the revolution away from the revolutionaries.
The first act opens with the character of the watchman, the
symbolic guardian of the revolution and caretaker of the graveyard of
the martyrs, asleep on the job, his face covered with a copy of Thoppil
Bhasi’s play You Made Me a Communist. The image is as amusing as it is
profound. In the background, the news is blaring over the radio that
Gopalan has been elected chief minister and would like to come to
place a wreath for the martyrs at the cemetery. The watchman wakes
up and walks, without thinking, as if he is in a parade, signaling the
empty and somnambulist tone of such official ceremonies as wreath
laying. At that moment, a different sort of procession enters: a funeral
procession, led by Bharati, the adopted daughter of Mala, and an old
man whose identity is not yet revealed. The watchman is upset—there
cannot possibly be any burials in the graveyard to mar the chief min-
ister’s visit— and rushes to intervene: “ Jesus, who is this? Whose
corpse?” Bharati walks to the graveyard wall and writes Mala’s name
next to the date 1994: “This is Mala,” she says. And picking up the
copy of the play that was on the watchman’s face, she clarifies that it is
184 Zook

“Thoppil Bhasi’s Mala.” The old man then states: “It is now the
moment to decide not only who is the hero of [Thoppil Bhasi’s] 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 been
hidden, how the flag of the revolution was taken away from Mala and
given to Gopalan and Kesavan Nayar. Bharati then explains further
what has happened to the revolution and the communists in terms
that manage to conjure up the most painful issue of twentieth-century
Kerala: not only was the flag taken from Mala and her community, but
“Mala and Karamban [her father] are once again kept at a distance of
sixty-four feet.” The latter refers to the former practice of keeping
untouchables literally at a distance from all higher castes. Through
Bharati’s statement, Chandran is claiming that the communists, far
from saving the untouchables as they have often claimed, have instead
become a high caste of their own, putting the untouchables back in
their place and turning their backs on the revolution.
Mala eventually rises from the dead— she walks “as if asleep” so
perhaps she was only sleeping a Snow White–like sleep— and erases
her name from the wall. The watchman is nearly at his wits’ end but
then takes comfort, nervously, from the fact that “this is just make-
believe, this is just a play.” Chandran is beginning to pile deeper and
deeper layers of meaning atop one another through references inter-
nal and external to the play and by repeated farcical statements that
can be read in different ways. The serious rhetoric of the politicians in
the play sounds ludicrous, and the ludicrous characters, like the watch-
man, appear as disturbingly serious (political) orators. By having the
watchman proclaim that “this is just a play,” Civic Chandran is intro-
ducing an impossible conundrum that characterizes the politics of
modern Kerala. If it is just a drama, then no one should be upset since
the claims are not “real.” But this also means that Thoppil Bhasi’s orig-
inal play was just a drama, too, and hence its claims, and perhaps the
revolution of which it is part, cannot be “real.” What is real and what
is not becomes difficult to discern—in Act 3, for instance, many of the
characters talk of how they were “invented” in various other works of
fiction and movies. Hence fictional characters of one author begin
quoting lines from other authors to show that they recognize the
works in which the others were “invented.” Everything is framed and
highlighted as fiction. But since Chandran is arguing that the claims
of 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, it
becomes clear that Gopalan could never have married Mala, since
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 185

Gopalan, though a comrade (Communist Party member), is educated

and 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 in
the graveyard, where the conversation about love takes place. There
are also intimations that Gopalan had a daughter by Mala. But since
Gopalan married Sumam, it is hinted that the youthful revolutionary
from Bhasi’s play, despite his rhetoric of equality between caste and
gender, could not overcome the attitude that there are some kinds of
girls 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 Mala
to show exactly who has been forgotten, indeed despised, by the revo-
lution: women and untouchables.11 Bharati is reproached by the Old
Man and laments that the person who is now despised by everyone,
Mala, is in fact the best of the lot. Any revolution that ignores these
two groups or forgets the meaning of the term “comrade” or the value
of the laborers, implies Chandran, is simply not worth its weight in red
revolutionary 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. The
Old Man at one point confesses to the watchman that he is a rehashed
character from previous revolutionary dramas and movies, claiming
that his first “role” came in Rantitanazhi (Two Measures of Rice). Rev-
olutionary literature and drama, Chandran seems to say, simply tells
the same old story over and over again, changing a name or two here
and there, but essentially telling the same old yarns. Chandran also
mixes his literary figures with “real-life” historical figures such as C. P.
Ramaswamy Aiyar or Ayyankali,12 and, as we have already seen, with
Thoppil 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 also
between past and present. The Communist Party is repeatedly charac-
terized as a remnant of the old order—not simply in the repeated dis-
cussions of caste, which slowly reveal the hypocrisy in the use of the
word “comrade” (sakhave), but also in blunt statements such as Bha-
rati’s observation in Act 4 that during communist rule the red flag was
merely a substitute for the maharaja’s conch (a symbol of royalty and
old Kerala). The blurring of past and present also reveals a pervasive
sense of historical injustice. The martyrs are restless, says the Old Man
186 Zook

standing in the cemetery: “Tonight, right here, don’t you see? . . . Now
the 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 unjust— and hence they cannot, so to
speak, rest in peace.
By repeatedly pointing out that his drama is “merely a play,”
Chandran prevents the audience from losing itself in the “romance”
of drama and revolution. At one point he implies that the people have
forgotten the difference between fighting a revolution and watching a
play about fighting a revolution. In Act 4, for instance, the Old Man
says to Bharati:

Forty-five years ago [Bhasi’s play] was written and presented more
than five thousand times. You know, child, we loved that play more
than the Party itself. For the old communists like us, performing the
drama 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 the
tendency of contemporary laborers to forget the hardship of the orig-
inal struggle now that they are used to government handouts and
benefits. At one point he reminds the audience that the original goal
of the workers’ movement was not higher wages but recognition of
their dignity. Despite the trenchant and often bitterly sarcastic lan-
guage of Chandran, the form of the play suggests a willingness to
understand the ease with which revolutions are forgotten: by shifting
the action of his play back and forth between real-time scenes in Chan-
dran’s play and the recreation of scenes from Bhasi’s original play —
and by bringing together references and characters from other revo-
lutionary dramas past and present alongside historical figures and
events—Chandran suggests that confusion may be an inevitable if
unintentional by-product of revolutionary fervor, particularly as it
decays into revolutionary orthodoxy. Even so, Chandran seems clear
on one point: the act of forgetting and the production of amnesiac his-
tory are the most powerful enemies of the revolution—hence the
crime of forgetting Mala and those like her.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the action of the play
and, to the extent that it is discernible, the moral of the story center
on 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 a
wreath at the graveyard of the martyrs. The ceremony is to be con-
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 187

ducted within a larger event composed of political processions that

reveal, through Chandran’s 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). Hence
only those in the procession who have “remembered” their dances and
can act “traditionally” will be visible to the audience. The true revolu-
tion (to forget one’s dance is to shed one’s identity from the oppres-
sive past) is thus ensconced in a hollow shell of indigenous, prerevo-
lutionary culture.
In the last act of Chandran’s play, the old flag from Bhasi’s 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 the
chief minister’s official car, which are bright and shiny and representa-
tive of the ruling elite. The ghost of Thoppil Bhasi returns to announce
the arrival of the new, “real” revolution, which has the communists
quaking in their sandals. Still, Chandran’s play is an “antidrama” and
hence would not allow for a neat ending. We can read the ending of
Civic Chandran’s drama in at least two ways: either his political theatre
is a polemic document, calling for a new revolution, or it is a play
which says that any new revolution, if it emerges, will exist only in a
play. The revolution is dead—long 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 to
reflect on what this means. According to Jacques Scherer (1975), “anti-
theatre” was a form of drama that emerged in eighteenth- century
Western Europe (particularly France) as “theatre” in the generic sense
became associated with acceptable and establishment values — even in
its 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 concept
even as it utilized it to articulate its venomous lexicon of ridicule and
antiestablishment farce. Although the action and nature of Civic Chan-
dran’s antidrama may seem a bit removed from eighteenth- century
France, the situations are remarkably analogous: by calling his play an
antidrama, 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 through
the language of resistance, radicalism, and revolution, the “normal”
antiestablishment lexicon through which the people’s theatre might
speak has already been appropriated. Hence just as subversive play-
wrights of eighteenth-century Western Europe had to “outfarce” the
188 Zook

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 the
antidrama are thus overloaded with meaning— and 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 Mikhail
Bakhtin’s belief, interpreted through Rabelais, in the liberating and
subversive power of laughter.14 What is interesting about Civic Chan-
dran’s play in this regard, however, is that it poses an altogether novel
and 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 low
threshold of tolerance when it comes to self-ridicule; revolutionary
theatre as a state-sponsored endeavor, whether in its Chinese, Soviet,
or Malayali models, has as a rule been decidedly unfunny.15 In the
glory days (if such a description is possible) of the Soviet Empire or
the Communist Bloc, literary works such as Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita or Milan Kundera’s The Joke, which hinted at the pos-
sibility of self-directed ridicule, were deemed subversive and often
banned entirely. The revolutionary theatre of the Communist Party in
India has similarly remained straight-faced and remarkably intolerant
of self-ridicule: Thoppil Bhasi’s plays may have been popular, but they
were serious to the point of melodrama. Certainly there were those
who ridiculed Bhasi’s revolutionary melodrama, but that was before
the revolution came to town. Civic Chandran wants something truly
different: a revolution that is not afraid to laugh.
Even without the revolutionary aspects of theatrical farce in
Communist-ruled Kerala, Civic Chandran is writing in the context of
a well -established postindependence and India-wide trend of theatri-
cal performance. This trend has relied on increasingly sophisticated
and subversive approaches to keep farce in the realm of people’s the-
atre when the political spectacles of the actual state itself seem
designed to act as competition in a contest of farces. Girish Karnad’s
Kannada-language play Muhammad Tughalak (Tughlaq), published in
1964 just as the era of Nehru’s rule was coming to an end, has taken
on an increased sense of relevance and resonance as post-Nehru poli-
tics—particularly the totalitarian period of Indira Gandhi’s emer-
gence in 1975–1977—reveals itself as a continuous canard of gro-
tesque proportions. Karnad’s play is not an antidrama but a complex
farce (prahasana vinod) in which “serious” political rule becomes
increasingly indistinguishable from political charade and brute force
masquerades as idealism in the hands of Muhammad Tughlaq, a four-
teenth- century monarch of northern India. In the final, thirteenth
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 189

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

It is true that I killed Ghiyas-ud-din and deceived you, master. But

even 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. You
might ask, who else is there in this kingdom who has devoted the past
five years of his life in your service? [Karnad 1964, 125]

Tughlaq is at first angry with Aziz’s insolence, calling him a fool

because of his sophistic reasoning. Yet Tughlaq soon sees the “reason”
in Aziz’s words —bursting out with buffoonish, almost insane laughter
at his point of “enlightenment”— and, referring to himself as a fool in
the 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-optation
and inclusion in the words and deeds of the state—here represented
by analogy through the character of Tughlaq. The nonsensical rea-
soning through which Aziz, as the clown, justifies his heinous actions
turns out to be synonymous with the reasoning through which Tugh-
laq has pursued his own political intrigues: government action is itself
a farce. The clown does not merely imitate the king—part of the power
of farce is in recognizing the clown and the king as separate charac-
ters—but in fact elides with the king: the clown becomes the king and
the king becomes the clown. And in that moment the possibility of
clowning, or even of laughter, disappears. Karnad’s play implies that
a despotic or totalitarian state is one that precludes the possibility of
laughter. By extension, then, and in the same vein as Karnad’s critique
(or warning), we can interpret the unamused reactions of communist
officials to Civic Chandran’s play — some considered it nearly “sacrile-
gious”—in Kerala as corroboration of one of Chandran’s key points:
that the communist state has become the very tyranny against which
the revolution was originally waged.
Yet the laughter-thwarting political machinations that have hin-
dered or complicated the development of people’s theatre in Kerala
specifically and in India generally have not always come from outside
190 Zook

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 the
eyes of Rustom Bharucha, we can see how the maturation of a true
“people’s theatre” has been stunted by a rather large bundle of cul-
tural and ideological baggage. Bharucha interprets the evolution of a
people’s 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 is
praised for using Western ideas to “throw off the fetters forged for us
by a servile admiration of everything Sanskrit” (Madhusadhan’s words),
Bharucha takes pains to point out that Madhusadhan was, “in all prob-
ability, embarrassed by the aping of Western manners and customs by
English-educated Indians of his day” (Bharucha 1983, 14). Similarly,
Bharucha quotes another pivotal figure in the rise of political theatre
in Bengal from the 1920s, Sisir Bahaduri, who lamented: “We have
made the mistake of imitating the English models, of forsaking our
own 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 Yet
if what is “alien” is inherently false, then we arrive, both through
Bharucha and through the playwrights he quotes, at an egregious con-
tradiction: when the “people’s theatre” emerges in Bengal in recog-
nizable form in the 1930s, it does so in association with groups such as
the Progressive Writer’s Association, which was inspired by literary and
cultural movements in Europe, and the Indian People’s 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-
ple’s theatre in rural Bengal was not so much a triumph of the Indian
(or, better, the Bengali) voice acting out against the oppressors of the
people as it was a forum in which one Western alien voice (Marxism/
communism) was translated into local dialect to serve as the people’s
opposition to another alien voice (colonialism/capitalism).
In fact, the layers of irony and contradiction are even more rich
and complex. P. Kesava Dev’s short story “Otayilninnu” (Out of the
Gutter), for instance, one of the most important pieces of radical lit-
erature in Malayalam, drew heavily in both content and ideology from
Victor Hugo’s 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 people’s theatre in India
has tended, are somehow more authentic or more indigenous than
other types of theatre. The yatra ( jatra) of Bengal—and its Malayali
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 191

counterpart the jatha —both claim to be folk theatre styles which have
their origins among the people; their significance for political theatre
in India stems from the fact that they were supposedly an indigenous
folk model that, among other things, questioned the Western conven-
tions of the proscenium arch or the passive, paying audience.17 Yet the
“procession” that lies at the heart of the concept of yatra has gone
through a number of transformations since its putative origins as an
orthodox (“top down”) missionary activity among the followers of
Chaitanya’s tantric vision of Vaishnavite devotionalism.18 In the mid-
nineteenth century in Bengal, the yatra became secularized in content
and heavily westernized in form—the proscenium arch, for instance,
was incorporated during this period—and, as the story goes, only
returned to its “original” form as a theatre intended for the rural
masses (and eventually the urban) when it was reclaimed in the twen-
tieth century by radical leftist playwrights in Bengal, most importantly
by Utpal Dutt. The story of its reclamation for the people and by the
people, however, has a few kinks in it that tend to get smoothed over
in the heroic version of the tale. Before the communist and leftist play-
wrights reinvented the yatra as a secular form for missionaries of radi-
cal propaganda, colonial development workers and social reformers
had 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, village
improvement, and civic social relations (Zook 1998).
Again the accomplishment of Civic Chandran in this respect
should not be underestimated. For he is working in an environment
which faces new conceptual challenges that early revolutionary play-
wrights did not have to face — at least not to the degree witnessed in
the 1990s. In addition to facing the orthodox wrath of the communist
state government in Kerala, Civic Chandran is also searching for a true
people’s 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 new
political meanings, a process arguably perfected by the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP). The BJP government, along with other “cultural”
organizations with a Hindu fundamentalist agenda, such as the Rash-
triya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS), are currently in the process of trying
to reclaim and classify as indigenous anything that they want to have
positively associated with an exclusively Hindu India. What this means
for playwrights and troupes who are experimenting with folk or osten-
sibly indigenous modes of theatre is that the people’s theatre suddenly
aligns discomfortingly well with the political program of a quasi-fascist
state.19 Looking for indigenous roots for people’s theatre simultane-
192 Zook

ously draws such theatre into the hands of the people and the state, and
in fact might unwittingly bring the state deeper into the lives of those
who are in fact seeking to distance themselves from it or resist its per-
vasive power.20 The absurdity of such a situation introduces a new
series of challenges for politically active or civic-minded playwrights in
contemporary India and helps to explain the type of extreme farce of
which Civic Chandran’s play is but one prominent example.21
So if borrowing from the “alien” source is inherently false —yet
searching for the indigenous source brings the unwelcome approval
of the state (with the threat of incorporation)—what then, to return to
our original question, is a revolutionary playwright to do? Some have
argued that this state of indeterminacy— of being neither above nor
below, neither indigenous nor foreign—constitutes the essence of the
postcolonial condition. Indeed, some have gone so far as to suggest
that this state of indeterminacy, insofar as it denies the categorization
and classification supposedly reminiscent of colonial hegemony, is in
fact both a state of suffering and a state of resistance (Gupta 1998).
But indeterminacy and the inability to be categorized easily are surely
not the monopoly of non-Western or postcolonial peoples. Hence this
argument is misguided to the extent that it privileges the uniqueness
of alienation and indeterminacy for the postcolonial world. The diffi-
culty of sorting through the history and current status of yatra, for
instance, remains a difficulty only insofar as the mixture of styles and
influences is perceived as a problem. The Indian (and South Asian)
past and present are inhabited by the spirits of many different cultural
influences that can only be rendered “Indian” or “alien” by imposing
the 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 South
Asia; the supposed tension between the indigenous and the alien is
false and illusory. When Nandi Bhatia tries to explain away the “embar-
rassment” of the fact that the radical Indian People’s Theatre Associa-
tion often staged European plays and used European influence by stat-
ing that they did so “to escape censorship” and “to camouflage their
messages and propagate their anti-imperial ideas in covert ways,” we
can see the same disturbing process of trying to excise the “alien” and
reclaim it as indigenous that we see in, for example, the BJP’s attempt
to pass off Western nuclear technology as an “indigenous weapons sys-
tem” (Bhatia 1997, 446; see Zook 2000). If a true people’s theatre is to
emerge in contemporary India, one that can resist the machinations
of the state and assist in procuring social justice for the people who
constitute its primary audience, then it must embrace the mixing of
styles and influences and unmask the insidious politics of inventing
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 193

the indigenous by dissolving the putative contradiction between alien

and pure sources in the construction of civic culture.22 The oppressed
and downtrodden of India (and elsewhere) come from many different
cultures and classes—they are, to use a much vaunted but poorly
understood term, multicultural— and hence only a multicultural the-
atre in India, one that reaches across cultural boundaries both within
India and without, can lay claim to being in any true sense a theatre of
the people.

Beyond Farce
In much of the literature on the “people’s 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 of
theatre and formal methods of presentation, is somehow closer to the
masses 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 and
actor and are presented in public forums designed to attract a mass
audience are not the exclusive domain of theatres that present the
“truth” as opposed to “artificial” theatres. In India, political theatre
has tended just as easily toward a theatre of liberation or a theatre of
propaganda— and as the state itself has come to rely increasingly on
public spectacles of mass politics, the line between the two will be
increasingly difficult to negotiate. Not all theatre in India must tend
toward farce to escape the gravity of nationalism. Girish Karnad’s most
recent play, for instance, Agni Mattu Male (The Fire and the Rain), has
managed to draw deeply from a little-known tale from the Mahabha-
rata without sliding into a nationalistic call for the revival of indigenous
theatre by utilizing universal themes that extend beyond the confines
of Hinduism or the Indian nation. 23 This would suggest the possibility
of another direction in which political theatre in contemporary India
might proceed: not toward a drama that revives and evokes a heroic
past, but toward one that interrogates that past as well as the urge to
relive it. A vibrant political theatre in contemporary India need not
assume the task of choosing which approach works best—this was one
of the main shortcomings of the rigidly Marxist Indian People’s The-
atre Association. What it can assume is the responsibility for creating a
public space that allows for the possibility of multiple and diverse
approaches through which civic culture may reach into and beyond the
power of the state. 24
Civic Chandran’s 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-
194 Zook

dramatic, simplistic play such as Thoppil Bhasi’s 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 justice
through the means of political theatre. It is neither the king nor the
rebel who in the end takes the revolutionary day. Rather, implies Civic
Chandran, it is the public-spirited commoner who is part critic, part
clown, 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 Hashmi
put it. Rather, it is the incorrigibly ambivalent rhetoric of the clown or
jester that will fight through the hazy rhetoric of orthodoxy emanating
from 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 revolutionary
passion or rhetoric of meaning.Yet Civic Chandran is not willing to let
us recede into cynical narcissism. His point—if I read his antiplay cor-
rectly— is that farce and satire sustain us both through good times and
through bad, for without this intermittent laughter there would only
be tears.

NOTES

1. On the difficulties faced by the Jana Natya Manch, see Safdar

Hashmi’s own account (1989, 3–5) of the attempt to perform the street play
DTC ki Dhandli (The Fraudulence of Delhi Transport Corporation) in 1986,
which was broken up by police, making the actors “criminals.” See also the
collection (SAHMAT 1989) of articles relating to Safdar Hashmi, his life’s
work, and the attack that put an end to it all; for another treatment see Van
Erven (1992, chap. 6).
2. The Ajoka Theatre in Pakistan, for example, while not strictly a
street theatre troupe, is certainly an informal and unofficial group advocating
the rights of workers, women, and other communities marginalized by the
increasingly censored artistic atmosphere in Pakistan. Indeed, in the recent
and 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 Natyasastra of Bharata Muni, the earliest known text on the
dramatic arts in South Asia, the cosmic and mythological origins of theatre as
a spectacle are considered divinely mandated (an ideological remnant that
lingers in the consecration of theatrical space or in the link between theatre
construction 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.
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 195

4. Rao and Rao (1992) offer a new translation of Mitra’s play as well
as an extensive introduction that goes beyond the play into the larger social,
political, and economic contexts out of which it was born. In discussing the
public reaction to the play, the authors give the impression that the Bengali
public loved it and the British loathed and feared it. The reality is much less
clear cut, however, and much less nationalistic (pp. 136 –37). See also Bha-
rucha (1983, 16–20).
5. The story of the development state is covered in Jeffrey (1993).
6. The name of the play is the same as the first volume of Bhasi’s auto-
biography (Bhasi 1960).
7. The second volume of his autobiography (Bhasi 1993), written
many years later and tempered with slight cynicism of experience, reads very
differently from the first volume.
8. Thakazhi Sivasankarapillai’s novel Thottiyute Makan (Scavenger’s
Son) ends with dual images: a revolutionary procession (red flag prominently
in the lead), which is fired upon by the authorities, and a plot of wasteland
that serves as a graveyard for those martyred in the procession. The last sen-
tence of the novel hints at the unjust deaths and the future retribution of the
revolution: “Even today on that wasteland, there are skeletons that dance!”
(Sivasankarapillai 1996, 126).
9. Bringing Bhasi back from the grave has yet another layer of mean-
ing. In his own play, Olivile Ormmakal (Memories in Hiding), based on a sec-
tion of his autobiography, Bhasi includes himself as a character. After his
death in 1992, it is clear that every time the play is performed he is now a
ghost who can speak from beyond the grave.
10. In Act 3 the Old Man introduces himself as Comrade Alias—some-
one who is part of all political parties and therefore has no real or specific
identity. Ultimately, however, he reveals himself as one K. P. Patros; Civic
Chandran intentionally keeps his identity vague in order to accentuate the
content of the dialogue.
11. This is an especially serious charge considering that much of Ker-
ala’s reputation as a development model and successful revolutionary state
rests on the uniquely high status of its women in relation to the rest of India.
12. C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyar, the dewan (chief minister) of Travancore,
was often attacked by radicals for his conservative views but was knighted by
the British for his liberal views. Ayyankali (1863–1941) was an active crusader
from the Pulaya community who fought for justice among the low-caste and
untouchable communities.
13. Scherer also notes that the differences between theatre and anti-
theatre are nuanced and not at all obvious—which in fact enhances the sub-
versive powers of antitheatre. According to Rey-Flaud (1984), the same is true
for the precursor of antitheatre: the medieval farce. That is, it is the subtleties
and nuances of farce, as opposed to the obvious and almost formulaic devices
of comedy, that have made farce such a powerful and threatening dramatic
genre.
14. The key work here, of course, is Bakhtin (1984).
15. For a cautious exception to this pattern in China see Du (1998).
196 Zook

16. The yatra is discussed below.

17. Aside from the yatra and 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, even
staunchly “traditional” varieties of theatre such as kathakali of Kerala and
terukuttu of 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 the
yatra, although all of them acknowledge its moralistic, orthodox underpin-
nings. Sliwczynska (1998) has argued that the yatra ’s endurance and popu-
larity can be explained by its versatility and adaptability—it continues to serve
as something of a mirror for ever-changing (Bengali) sensibilities. Ajitkumar
Ghosh (1985), who starts his history with the yatra, emphasizes its joint ori-
gins in religious ritual, pilgrimage, and localized “folk” rituals associated with
eroticism.
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 of
the Indian People’s Theatre Association “to build a national identity through
drama.” Ignoring the violent hegemony of nationalism itself, Bhatia argues
that the appropriation of Western dramatic practices for nationalism helped
“to advance its counterhegemonic agenda” and to rupture “the falsely per-
petuated ideas about the ‘superior West’” (p. 445). See also my discussion of
Bhatia’s argument later.
20. The relationship between the state and theatre, especially during
periods of political instability or repression, has always been something of an
anomaly. Rajini Obeyesekere (1999) focuses on the strange permissiveness
allotted to political theatre during a period of cultural authoritarianism. One
answer to this puzzle might be found in Roger Allen (1998, 341): “In the
decade preceding the 1967 war it appears to have been a deliberate policy of
the 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 one
critic puts it, drama served as a kind of ‘popular parliament.’” For a different
interpretation see Bodden (1997).
21. Candreshvar (1994, 71–72) notes that to its credit (although a bit
late in my opinion), the People’s Theatre Movement in India has recognized
that 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 People’s Theatre
Association (IPTA)—a revolution characterized by a desire simultaneously to
encourage more (regional) diversity in its tactics and presentations and to
hold critical, national dialogues among the various people’s theatre groups
around the country.
22. In Ning Zhang’s (1998) fascinating study of Western theatre in
China, she argues that new political trends in the 1980s allowed for a plural-
ism of influences in Chinese theatre, including new experimentation with the
works of Shakespeare, Brecht, and Arthur Miller. Although, as Zhang notes,
Poli tical Theatre in Con t e mporary India 197

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 and
expansive—indeed, many playwrights used this opportunity to expand the
opportunity of pluralistic political spaces. This is contrasted to the situation
in India under the influence of fundamentalist politics: whereas in China the
process has been productive and no attempt has been made to hide Western
influences, in India the process has been constrictive (and perhaps destruc-
tive) insofar as it has denied the possibility of foreign influence in favor of an
artificial, “indigenous” culture. See also Li (1995).
23. See Girish Karnad (1998). This works in many ways. What makes
the plays of Ibsen, Brecht, and others so appealing in India is their ability to
express themes and emotions that are prevalent in Indian society (and other
societies as well). Similarly, Karnad’s play, by utilizing universal themes rather
than culturally nationalist subjects, might appeal not only to Hindus but to
other religions and cultures. This outward movement is opposed to the
inward-looking, chauvinistic rhetoric of indigenousness being flaunted by the
BJP, the RSS, and, lamentably, many Indians in general.
24. The ease with which even critical voices can end up supporting
the (nationalist) orthodoxy of their opponents shows how subtle and difficult
a task creating a true “people’s theatre” can be. Obeyesekere (1999), for
instance, 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 regarding
Sinhalese theatre and the Sinhalese language that “forced” Tamils in Sri
Lanka as early as 1956 to pursue a separate theatrical space of protest devoid
of Sinhalese but equally Sri Lankan (p. 113).

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