UGC MHRD e Pathshala Subject: English Principal Investigator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Paper 09: Comparative Literature: Drama in India Paper Coordinator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Module 16:Impact of Marxism and Freudian Psychoanalysis Content Writer: Mr. Subhadeep Kumar, University of Hyderabad Content Reviewer: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Language Editor: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Introduction The early 20th century was an age of assertion for Indian theatre. The proscenium theatre had been firmly established as the dominant mode of theatrical expression in urban India. If any ideology is to be identified with the general trend of the period, it would be nationalism. Huge numbers of historical and mythological themes were present, but still a nationalist reading of most of these plays is possible. In the late 19th century drama was constantly attempted to be censored and sanitized by the colonial state, but the practitioners constantly devised ingenuous methods of scuttling sedition laws and presenting their content. European playwrights were also looked up as models and European ideas were often borrowed. Shakespeare remained a model and numerous renderings of Shakespearean plays were staged in both English and regional Indian languages. Early 20th century European realism of Ibsen was well known and Strindberg and Meterlink’s symbolism became influential through Tagore’s later plays. However, this was the period when the very function of art in social life was being questioned. Whether art is for art’s sake alone or art has some other broader transformative social function. The Indian proscenium stage was peopled by socially conscious nationalist workers from its formative period and the votaries of the social role of art had a clear majority in this sector. Marxism as a philosophy with its stress on praxis was thus enthusiastically embraced by thespians in this period. Austrian Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was analyzing the domain of unconscious in the human mind. His theory, which stressed the importance of the repressive element in formation of the human social being, took the world by storm. Psychology had never been so popular before. The world witnessed one Great War for 4 years and another one was generally anticipated. In this milieu the figure of the rational Human being working by ‘normal’ utilitarian impulses were becoming untenable and Freud’s conception of Human beings deeply scarred by repressions, especially the psychosexual libidinal aspects of it seemed credible - these two forces would significantly transform mimetic practices of India in the following decades. Impact of Marxism on Indian Theatre Marxism in Indian theatre was inserted logically within the spate of nationalist theatre of the 1930s and 40s. The nationalist emphasis on a theatre in support of the struggle against the foreign colonizers and the socialist stress on a theatre depicting the oppression of the working people in a deeply unequal socio-economic structure were kindred concerns, at least in this nascent phase of socialist cultural activism before independence. The first consolidation of Indian left leaning writers – Indian Progressive Writers Association, were anti-imperialists and on that score strongly supported the cause of an independent India. Men and women like Mulk Raj Anand, Krishan Chander, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ismat Chughtai, Dr. Joshi Parshad; some of them got exposed to Marxism while they were students in Britain. In 1942, the Indian People’s Theatre Association was formed in the background of World War 2. The young members of the group, all of whom would later be stalwarts by their own right in the annals of Indian drama were committed to an ideology of interventionist art. Most of them were members of the Anti-Fascist Writers and Artists’ Association of Calcutta. They were influenced by Russian Socialist Realism. For a model they looked towards the productions of the Moscow Art Theater in 1930s and the reproductions of Odets’ plays in the Group Theatre of New York. With the onset of the Bengal famine of 1943, the members engaged in full time aid work in cooperation with the Communist Party of India. In 1944, Bijon Bhattacharya’s Nabanna (New Harvest) was staged, directed by the young Shambhu Mitra. It depicts the gravity of the tragedy in which 2 million people died in less than a year. Centred on the destitution of a single peasant family, its depiction of the relationship between rural moneylenders and a perfectly apathetic colonial government compounding the food shortage, especially in a season of surplus harvest, is almost uncanny. The play was a major success and gathered lakhs of rupees for famine relief. IPTA in its formation was more of a local Calcutta consolidation, though the issues brought forth in their work had universal appeals and the members enjoyed camaraderie with left leaning cultural workers from other parts of the country. It was Nabanna’s success that led to the impetus of founding IPTA branches across India. A host of young talents started to be drawn towards IPTA in this phase – Ravi Shankar, Mulk Raj Anand, Khwaja Ahmed Abbas to name a few. One of IPTA’s major innovation was in synthesizing indigenous dramatic practices with novel political content. This led to salient transformations in the dictions of a host of regional dramatic traditions. The strategy was effective as the novelty of the moral-political message did not strike the regional audience as alien when framed in their familiar theatrical dictions. In Andhra Pradesh, the IPTA workers utilized the form of Burrakatha, where a narrator strums the Burra, (string instrument, resembling tanpura, but smaller in size), accompanied by drum, singing and narrating historical tales. In the IPTA avatar of burrakatha , modern themes and issues with high content of social critique were inserted into historical and mythological plots with masterful aptness. In Maharastra, they used the prevalent form of Tamasha, generally considered a bawdy form of entertainment with suggestive lewd references. In the able hand of Shahir Annabhav Sathe, the form was used to launch pervasive attacks on the continuing exploitation of the peasantry by rural moneylenders in newly independent India. Kalicharan Pattanaik experimented with socialist realism in Odia theatre. His drama - Bhata (rice), written in early 1940s and later Raktamati were the first Odia plays with explicit political content. In Kerala, K. Damodaran was writing plays concerned with the issue of control of economic resources. His play – Pattabaki delved into the exploitative relationship between landlord and tenant. Marxism after Independence With India becoming independent, the old consensus between nationalists and people with more socialist inclinations became strained. The issue now was, whether achieving independence itself would provide the proper conditions for equitable distribution and control of resources or the new native ruling class need to be pressurized relentlessly and if needed overthrown for the creation of a socialist state. The situation was not helped by the Communist Party of India’s attempt at running its writ on the day to day functioning of IPTA. The Communist Party rightly realized the tremendous potential of the organization for propaganda purposes. In Kerala, The Kerala People’s Art Club of Trivundrum, staged the play – Ningalenne Communistakki (You made me a communist). The play was performed more than 600 times all over Kerala and is recalled as a reason for the victory of CPI in 1957, Kerala State Assembly elections. Socialism in Theatre beyond IPTA In Bengal, Utpal Dutt a former member of IPTA, launched the People’s Little Theatre Group in 1947. The group concentrated on staging improvisational, almost impromptu street corner performances, which they called ‘Pathanatika’ or Street Theatre. The form worked as an incubation for the later flowering of Street Theater from the 70s, which would attract such legendary talents as Badal Sircar and Safdar Hasmi. Dutt’s most significant early play was Angar (ember), it dealt with the exploitation of coal miners in the hand of an inhuman managerial structure in cahoots with the avaricious profit making impulse of the owners. In 1960s, Dutt along with a number of his cultural comrades shifted allegiance from the CPI to the recently formed Communist Party of India (Marxist). By the 60s, the grand old CPI started to be perceived as less radical and giving away to an exclusive electoral logic in league with the other bourgeois parties of India. Dutt propounded his idea of a political theatre as a “revolutionary theatre [which] must preach revolution; it must not only expose the system, but also call for the violent smashing of the state machine”. After his shift to the CPI (M) he produced Teer (arrow), Din Bodoler Pala (play of Changing Times). In these plays, his constant theme was the raging atrocities of state security establishments against dissenters. It gave moral approval to the people’s right to resist the repression and defend themselves, if needed by violent means. He took on the popular Bengali traditional theatrical form of Jatra, and the old form was vitalized with novel themes that general jatra audience were rarely exposed to – Lenin, Fall of Berlin, Vietnam, Indigo Revolution. Another person from the People’s Little Theatre Group of Calcutta - Anal Gupta, wrote the play Rakter Rang (colour of Blood) about the peasant struggle and the resultant atrocity meted out by Indian security forces in Naxalbari. Dutt and his comrades’ example of dissenting from reductive party dictats perhaps influenced the women of Miranda House College to stage India 69. Influence of socialist realism exists with formative elements of absurd, a characteristic of Dutt’s later plays. Openly irreverent of all political parties, including both the Communist Parties, the play ran with the announcement – “not merely to understand the world, but to change it”. It is a reference to Marx’s famous Thesis on Feuerbach – “Philosophers had only interpreted the world in different ways, the point is to change it”.