Nishant Natya Manch-Review of a performance by Professor Ishtiaque Ahmed in The News Lahore--1-4-2007
by Shamsul Islam (Notes) on Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 9:36am
Editor-in-Chief: Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman
Street theatre in Delhi
The International Women's Day on March 8 is celebrated throughout the world to highlight the continuing vulnerable situation of women and to emphasise that as long as females are treated as inferior a genuinely egalitarian, democratic and humane society is still a very distant goal.
This message was brought home with intense dramatic effect on the lawns of Kirormal College of the University of Delhi by the street theatre group, Nishant (which means in Hindi 'end of darkness'). It was a fairly mild spring day and a large group of students and teachers were waiting for the play to start. I arrived just in time to see the group play an adapted version of the well-known Urdu short-story writer and novelist Krishan Chander's (1914-1977) famous story, Garrha (Hole/Pit). It is one of the most powerful satires of Krishan Chander.
The senior-most members of Nishant, Professor Shamsul Islam and his wife Neelima Sharma, have been for years taking up the themes of poverty, corruption, casteism, religious bigotry and warmongering in their street performances. In the original story a poor man falls into a hole in the earth. He starts yelling for help but nobody pays any attention to his pleas because they see no advantage in coming to his aid. Neelima had adapted Krishan Chander's Garrha to the stark reality of female degradation and replaced the man with a woman.
The woman pleads for help but street loafers, politicians, priests, the police and an academic bloke researching precisely the depressed status of Indian women -- one after the other arrive on the scene but helping a woman in distress does not cut much ice with them. The reasons they give for not doing so make very interesting though pathetic reasoning: the most interesting scene is when a Hindu pundit and a Muslim mulla refuse her help under various pretexts, including their suspicion that she does not belong to their faith, but both agree that women who do not obey men deserve to be punished and therefore falling in the pit must be some sort of divine penalising.
I could notice that the actors were completely engrossed in the characters assigned to them and made very convincing cases of the roles they played. The director, Professor Shamsul Islam, had with great skill and imagination employed humour and wit rather than a harsh and stern approach in interpreting the plight of the woman in the hole. We know from the long tradition of playwriting extending from Shakespeare to George Bernard Shaw that humour can sometimes be the most powerful medium to portray tragedy; Professor Islam indeed had grasped that point very well and brought it across most subtly.
I, therefore, do not know exactly whom the credit should go to most -- to Krishan Chander for providing the original idea of capitalist society treating poor human beings as expendable commodity; to Neelima Sharma for replacing the poor man with a poor and disowned woman and thus locating the focal point of oppression even more accurately; to Shamsul Islam for his excellent direction; or, to the various young men and women who played their roles so convincingly.
Perhaps the wisdom of the whole experience is not to try to identify the one particular candidate for most credit; rather, it was the spirit of comradeship and team work of the Nishant Street Theatre Group that deserved to get appreciation and praise collectively. Indeed the Nishant Group's philosophy is that only by working together can human beings create a better world.
The performance had an electrifying effect on the audience. Hundreds of students and several from the faculty were watching the play, and I in particular looked at the young female students who were watching it with utmost concentration. There was no doubt that each one of us had been profoundly touched by the play. Afterwards several small groups were formed and the audience and the Nishant actors were engaged in lively discussion on the position of women in Indian society. The general consensus was that without popular participation in awareness-raising campaigns things will not change fundamentally.
Nishant comprises about 100 committed activists who have performed street theatre in Hindi, Urdu, Haryanvi, Bhojpuri, Nepali, Punjabi and Telugu. It started its cultural journey in 1971 with the object of taking the dreams of justice and equality of people like Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Ashfaqullah Khan, Chandershekhar Azad, Udham Singh and others who laid down their lives while opposing British rule in India to the common people of India who they believe have been cheated by the ruling classes of India.
Nishant has to its credit more than 50 plays and hundreds of songs. The Nishant activists are known for their quick cultural intervention at any place where needed. They have even been to Pakistan and performed in Lahore. It was heartening to know that the reception of the Lahore crowd to their play had also been immensely positive and many women came forward to discuss with them how to create similar groups in Pakistan.
It reminded me of the late 1960s and early 1970s when we in Pakistan had been mobilising mass support for the Pakistan People's Party and its charismatic leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who promised food, clothing and shelter to all citizens. I remember how idealistic young men and also girls and women had joined that mass mobilisation, but everything went wrong after 1977. Now in Pakistan one found either enthusiasts of neo-liberal capitalism or neo-fascist fundamentalism.
The heroic left meets to recall old times and tell tales of revolutionaries of a bygone era who struggled for a better world. I must say my own nostalgia for those days and a sense of guilt for leading a rather privileged life in the west has always bothered me. I was therefore deeply moved by the efforts of the street actors of Delhi to continue to uphold the honourable tradition of campaigning for a better world through theatre.
Like Nishant I too am convinced that the purpose of life is to try to change the world in a way that nobody is treated unjustly or unfairly and nobody has to live in fear of persecution and hunger. One day hopefully this message of Nishant will be heeded by all and sundry. My own hunch is that social-democracy coupled with individual freedom and choice and the rule of law is the formula that will ultimately prevail because that combination is the best one that we know of thus far.
The writer is professor of political science at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. Email: Ishtiaq.Ahmed@statsvet.su.se
Street theatre in Delhi
The International Women's Day on March 8 is celebrated throughout the world to highlight the continuing vulnerable situation of women and to emphasise that as long as females are treated as inferior a genuinely egalitarian, democratic and humane society is still a very distant goal.
This message was brought home with intense dramatic effect on the lawns of Kirormal College of the University of Delhi by the street theatre group, Nishant (which means in Hindi 'end of darkness'). It was a fairly mild spring day and a large group of students and teachers were waiting for the play to start. I arrived just in time to see the group play an adapted version of the well-known Urdu short-story writer and novelist Krishan Chander's (1914-1977) famous story, Garrha (Hole/Pit). It is one of the most powerful satires of Krishan Chander.
The senior-most members of Nishant, Professor Shamsul Islam and his wife Neelima Sharma, have been for years taking up the themes of poverty, corruption, casteism, religious bigotry and warmongering in their street performances. In the original story a poor man falls into a hole in the earth. He starts yelling for help but nobody pays any attention to his pleas because they see no advantage in coming to his aid. Neelima had adapted Krishan Chander's Garrha to the stark reality of female degradation and replaced the man with a woman.
The woman pleads for help but street loafers, politicians, priests, the police and an academic bloke researching precisely the depressed status of Indian women -- one after the other arrive on the scene but helping a woman in distress does not cut much ice with them. The reasons they give for not doing so make very interesting though pathetic reasoning: the most interesting scene is when a Hindu pundit and a Muslim mulla refuse her help under various pretexts, including their suspicion that she does not belong to their faith, but both agree that women who do not obey men deserve to be punished and therefore falling in the pit must be some sort of divine penalising.
I could notice that the actors were completely engrossed in the characters assigned to them and made very convincing cases of the roles they played. The director, Professor Shamsul Islam, had with great skill and imagination employed humour and wit rather than a harsh and stern approach in interpreting the plight of the woman in the hole. We know from the long tradition of playwriting extending from Shakespeare to George Bernard Shaw that humour can sometimes be the most powerful medium to portray tragedy; Professor Islam indeed had grasped that point very well and brought it across most subtly.
I, therefore, do not know exactly whom the credit should go to most -- to Krishan Chander for providing the original idea of capitalist society treating poor human beings as expendable commodity; to Neelima Sharma for replacing the poor man with a poor and disowned woman and thus locating the focal point of oppression even more accurately; to Shamsul Islam for his excellent direction; or, to the various young men and women who played their roles so convincingly.
Perhaps the wisdom of the whole experience is not to try to identify the one particular candidate for most credit; rather, it was the spirit of comradeship and team work of the Nishant Street Theatre Group that deserved to get appreciation and praise collectively. Indeed the Nishant Group's philosophy is that only by working together can human beings create a better world.
The performance had an electrifying effect on the audience. Hundreds of students and several from the faculty were watching the play, and I in particular looked at the young female students who were watching it with utmost concentration. There was no doubt that each one of us had been profoundly touched by the play. Afterwards several small groups were formed and the audience and the Nishant actors were engaged in lively discussion on the position of women in Indian society. The general consensus was that without popular participation in awareness-raising campaigns things will not change fundamentally.
Nishant comprises about 100 committed activists who have performed street theatre in Hindi, Urdu, Haryanvi, Bhojpuri, Nepali, Punjabi and Telugu. It started its cultural journey in 1971 with the object of taking the dreams of justice and equality of people like Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Ashfaqullah Khan, Chandershekhar Azad, Udham Singh and others who laid down their lives while opposing British rule in India to the common people of India who they believe have been cheated by the ruling classes of India.
Nishant has to its credit more than 50 plays and hundreds of songs. The Nishant activists are known for their quick cultural intervention at any place where needed. They have even been to Pakistan and performed in Lahore. It was heartening to know that the reception of the Lahore crowd to their play had also been immensely positive and many women came forward to discuss with them how to create similar groups in Pakistan.
It reminded me of the late 1960s and early 1970s when we in Pakistan had been mobilising mass support for the Pakistan People's Party and its charismatic leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who promised food, clothing and shelter to all citizens. I remember how idealistic young men and also girls and women had joined that mass mobilisation, but everything went wrong after 1977. Now in Pakistan one found either enthusiasts of neo-liberal capitalism or neo-fascist fundamentalism.
The heroic left meets to recall old times and tell tales of revolutionaries of a bygone era who struggled for a better world. I must say my own nostalgia for those days and a sense of guilt for leading a rather privileged life in the west has always bothered me. I was therefore deeply moved by the efforts of the street actors of Delhi to continue to uphold the honourable tradition of campaigning for a better world through theatre.
Like Nishant I too am convinced that the purpose of life is to try to change the world in a way that nobody is treated unjustly or unfairly and nobody has to live in fear of persecution and hunger. One day hopefully this message of Nishant will be heeded by all and sundry. My own hunch is that social-democracy coupled with individual freedom and choice and the rule of law is the formula that will ultimately prevail because that combination is the best one that we know of thus far.
The writer is professor of political science at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. Email: Ishtiaq.Ahmed@statsvet.su.se
