Theatre in Bengal, one of the most dynamic and active Institutions in contemporary India, has an intimate relationship with the people of Bengal. In India changing social and political conditions since the late 19th century have always resulted in diverse attempts to exploit theatre as a means for reaching vast audiences for purposes of education, publicity and propaganda.
Indian historiography, which started developing by the turn of the 19th century, depended largely on archaeology, epigraphy, and literary sources. It paid scant attention to ideology and social movements and still relies heavily on archival materials which were mainly government sources. Popular sources were completely neglected, of which dramatic literature and performance is an important aspect. It is inappropriate to say that in society the role of performing arts is nebulous and that people can live perfectly well without it. Social and political concerns in any community never fail to express itself in its art forms.
Bengal from 1905 to 1947, that is from Partition to Partition.
saw great socio-political upsurges, streams of dominant political ideologies the Moderates, the Extremists, the Revolutionary Terrorists, Communalism, the Gandhian era, and the resistant Left movement. Theatre, situated in the eternally liminal space of culture, became the locus of the internal contestation between public and private, consequently turning into a sort of synecdochic representation of the emerging nation-space. What was the role of theatre in shaping the socio-political movements of this time? How honestly was it serving the cause of Nationalism? How did theatre focus attention on issues, keeping certain events alive in the public memory? And how was it a means of understanding certain attitudes? The book intends to illustrate how political ideology found expression in theatre and how theatre in turn appropriated and informed ideology.
At the outset one must mention that studies such as these require careful sifting of a lot of subjective evidence of reminiscence. to reconstruct something. Almost nothing has been done in this field, especially in English. There has been sizeable research on theatre per se, but no thorough work relating theatre to sociology literature and politics of a particular time. Now that the barriers of discipline have broken down, it has become imperative and interesting for me to present the case of politics as related to Performing Arts.
This book is mainly "Nationalist" in focus, narrative in form, chronological and thematic in presentation. One has consciously made these choices because Nationalism is the grand discourse of the time, and how theatre responded to colonial rule is very important in Bengal's history. It is felt that sometimes the enterprise to put together complicated events and developments into a single unified cohesive manner or a thematic approach, deprives it of its richness. But events and the narratives have returned with much more emphasis in social history, and the endeavour has been to examine theatre in all its ramifications, as a part of the ongoing political exercise of resistance to the British Empire, and hence, in the process, becoming a political constituency in itself.
An attempt is made to research the vicissitudes through which the two-way role of theatre traversed in colonial Bengal. The complexity of the theme as a project was obvious, because it had virtually innumerable dimensions; may be that is the reason why 1 have not consciously tried to encompass all the dimensions, and there is an element of choice that I have exercised in line with the manageability of the project.
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Visual Search
Manage Wishlist