Jagan
Shah & Lalit Vachani
Filmmaker Lalit Vachani, and writer, theatre director and
architect Jagan Shah have been working on distinct but related projects on
Indian theatre. Lalit has made a documentary film on Jan Natya Manch (JANAM),
the Delhi-based street theatre group started by the charismatic Safdar Hashmi,
which today continues to actively pursue its agenda of doing meaningful
political theatre. JANAM grew out of the Delhi chapter of the Indian People’s
Theatre Association (IPTA) in the 1970s.
Jagan Shah, meanwhile, has been putting together the IPTA
story—from its formation in 1943 and its heydays in the 1940s and 50s, to its
slow decline over the last forty years. Jagan feels that the history of IPTA in
some way mirrors the cultural history of the nation—a trajectory “from
revolution to acquiescence”.
Lalit’s film, Natak Jari Hai, was released in 2005
and has been very well received. Jagan Shah has completed his documentation and
is contemplating using it as the basis of a screenplay for a film on IPTA.
Jagan Shah:
Lalit, I’d like to start by asking how you got interested in making a film on
JANAM. Also, how important did Safdar Hashmi become to the film?
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Lalit Vachani:
I’m going to rewind a bit. The original proposal I had written was not really
just about JANAM. The film on JANAM was going to be a small part of a larger
film. I was going to be doing a fair amount of archival research on IPTA and
the live component of the film was going to be on JANAM. To cut a long story
short, India Foundation for the Arts really felt that I had two films here. And
I think they felt that I wouldn’t be able to do justice to either. Initially I
was naturally a little resistant but as I got into the process of making the film
on IPTA, I realized that it didn’t really work. It would be very difficult to
make that film and I would probably
still have been working on it today. Doing archival work on IPTA, the way you
are, would have exhausted all my energy and resources.
So eventually we
decided to focus on JANAM and this film came out. So I’ll address Safdar later.
But talking about your archival project,
I’d like to ask—what are the nodal centres of your research?
When I spoke to Mala
Hashmi [of JANAM] about the idea of researching IPTA, she said, “If you are
doing something on IPTA, there is a chance that you’ll get lost. Because, which
chapter do you pick up? Do you just look at the heydays of movement in the 40s
and early 50s?” So was this a problem at all? What are the kinds of decisions
you had to make?
Jagan:
Well I think the two nodal centres were today and 1943. Certainly a lot of
effort was to try and recreate the 1943-49 period. (The last successful IPTA
conference was held in 1949.) And then the present is a very important nodal
point because there is a need to understand in the contemporary period what the
mechanisms of a political theatre are. Does it take the form of a movement? Is
it most effective in the form of a movement? Or should the strategy be to
create a multitude of minor, singular initiatives? And are the two in
opposition at all?
I
found in the study of the archive, that the IPTA story had been
institutionalized through some key texts, mainly three books by Sudhi Pradhan
[three volumes of The Marxist Cultural Movement in India]. But I found that
that was a very limited source, because Sudhi Pradhan gives you a single
snapshot of the IPTA movement seen from the perspective of one who had assumed
a very radical stance within the debate
at that time and who was an extreme believer in the operative use of theatre
for propaganda. The movement was made out to be a lot more revolutionary than
it perhaps actually was. Whereas oral history archives like the one in the
Nehru Museum, especially,
I
think, the interview with Govind Vidyarthi, reveal that there was a very ad hoc
nature to the so called movement. It was a lot about the Communist Party
recruiting people on a daily basis almost. He mentions many cases of a radio
play having to be done in the evening. So he calls up people to come and
perform that radio play. So there was this whole network of local sympathisers
and workers who were not all card carrying party members but who could be
recruited for doing, quote-unquote, revolutionary messages. So that gave a
totally different light to the material. It made the IPTA movement potentially
a much more alive sort of movement. Shifting to the present, one finds that
that sort of conflict between the party and the artist is still alive and still
needs to be resolved. It is a big question. Does people’s theatre derive from a
large, organised Sanghatan which creates people’s theatre across the country or
is people’s theatre actually the obverse of that—a nonorganised, completely disseminated
representation of the kind of consciousness which manifests itself in many
different conflicts? Those to me are the two nodal points and that is where the
conflict plays itself out.
Lalit:
I was reading up on the IPTA at the time I was applying to IFA; my reading was
really based on a little bit of Sudhi Pradhan and a lot of secondary sources.
Now what I came across was almost a kind of a romanticisation, a valorisation.
We all recognize that it was a very important era in terms of political artistic
work. But I also began to think there must have been fissures. Did you come
across material that showed up these fissures?
Jagan:
The real point of weakness to my mind is the problem of ascription. Because it
is such a loose overarching movement it tends to assume the privilege of
co-opting anybody into it. That to me is a big fissure because the IPTA
movement has also tried to cash in on connections that were not very strong—the
Uday Shankar connection, for instance. Built into the received narrative of the
IPTA is the idea that Uday Shankar, the great dancer, was somebody who espoused
the IPTA cause and became one with it. But there is archival evidence to
suggest that Uday Shankar did not give two hoots about the IPTA. He did perform
at one large workers’ rally. It was organised by the party and it was then
assumed to be an IPTA programme. The archival research, I guess, throws up many
such “untruths” which are built into the telling of IPTA.
Another
crisis in IPTA, to my mind, was that after a certain period, there was no new
content. Whatever had been created was mainly because of Bijon Bhattacharya.
Then Utpal Dutt created his revolutionary idea of theatre. And IPTA makes some
claims to that as well, whereas it was a complete rebuke to the IPTA point of
view. These are not necessarily fissures, but I find a lot of myths that have
been created about IPTA and I think the material explodes those myths.
Post-1949,
IPTA came under pressure because these cultural workers espoused an ideology
which was, obviously, not the right ideology to espouse at that time. It put
them outside the fold of the national structure, the Congress party’s view of
things. And so post-1949 and in the 1949 conference itself—this is my
interpretation—you see evidence of IPTA reaching out—wanting to create ways in which
the artists could become part of the national institutional structure. They
make a shift from what would be called a voice of dissent to one of oneness or
cooptation with the dominant discourse.
And
that moment is, to my mind, where IPTA more or less kind of loses that thread
of its history. And then it is revived in the 1980s and I think that revival is
entirely based on what you said earlier—sentiment. It was a completely
sentimental revival—as all revivals are. But it has lacked all the elements of
a revolutionary movement since its revival.
I
think in your film, something you set out to do and succeed very well in doing,
is portraying a little microcosm that is created as an end result of this large
movement. I found that very nice and very well captured. I was curious whether
the film began by looking at the character of the creator of JANAM—Safdar
Hashmi, who came out of the Students’ Federation of India. Or was the idea to
look at the group JANAM and its contemporary standing and to find Safdar in the
middle of that? What was the trajectory for you?
Lalit:
I wanted to look at Safdar in terms of some of the important historical plays
of JANAM’s like
Machine
and Aurat. I thought him a brilliant playwright and the use of language in
these plays was really powerful. The idea initially was to just follow the
making of one play from the beginning to the end—from the scripting stage to
the rehearsal stage to going out and test-casing a play to coming back,
perfecting it.
And
this, as it turned out, was absolutely not possible because at the time we
started filming JANAM, they were not rehearsing or writing a play, they were
going out and performing all the time. So that, in a sense, becomes the shape
of the film.
I
realised that Safdar would just be much more important in the film than I’d
thought—just the very nature of the tragedy of Safdar’s death and what it did
to JANAM.
His
spirit is so much a part of the group today. Safdar always had a problem
getting people to act in the JANAM plays but after his death many more people
started coming in.
JANAM
came, in a sense, to the forefront and was asked to take a kind of leadership
role in the people’s theatre movement. And it is in the way JANAM’s members
spoke about him that Safdar’s place really became apparent.
Jagan:
It seems to me that the IPTA movement has lost its steam mainly because there
are no leaders of this nature—the really active, younger protagonists of the
whole story. One of the rewarding things for me has been meeting some of the
younger people…sort of quasi-Safdars. One in particular was someone called Tanveer
Akhtar in Patna who heads the Bihar IPTA—a very interesting figure. Someone who
has spent years doing what he does. It has to be granted that Safdar was
unique. He created plays which were also of a certain power. But Tanveer also creates
theatre out of issues which are contemporary. And he always has this message
which is very much in line with a contemporary understanding of what is
subversive or a theatre of dissent. That has been very rewarding for me because
I feel that qua movement, a movement is as much its leader as it is its
followers.
I
felt that in your film the most powerful scene, the most disturbing also at
some level for me, is the scene where you finally end up with Sudhanva in the
space where Safdar was actually killed. And that was a very disturbing scene
because you’ve brought so much emotion to that scene. You have built it up. You
are walking through the streets. I had participated in the rally that came out
after Safdar’s murder. I remember that day. It was quite an amazing feeling in
Delhi that day. I think one brought all that to bear and then one just comes to
the emptiness of this space, obviously it is not a monument. And one felt this
amazing sense of isolation. I felt that on Sudhanva’s face and I could tell behind
the camera that you are feeling this. How do you actually recreate this
experience? It’s horror and how do we recreate that horror?
We
cannot. That was where one saw the limits of the film as a medium as well. You
can’t capture the horror of that man being murdered. It’s tragic. But I’m so
glad you made this film because it does fill in what I felt was one of the
important gaps that needed to be filled in my project.
Lalit:
You have been planning to build a cinematic archive on IPTA. Tell me a little
more about an archive that lends itself to the cinematic form.
Jagan:
I was a freshly-trained historian when I began thinking about this project. I
felt that the creation of a history of something like the IPTA, of which a
major component was live action, live performance, could not take place without
access to the subjective inputs of these artists.
That,
for me, was the driving force in the project—to capture the emotional content
of the movement.
The
idea of a cinematic narrative meant that one could trace emotional links with
the narrative which were not in the realm of ideology necessarily.
It
is driven by this sort of visceral experience of protests, dissent and
questioning of events as they unfolded. That’s why I chose the metaphor of a
cinematic narrative. I did not think any of the dominant modes of writing
history that I was trained in could give me access to that. An example is in
the story that I heard from Shaukat Azmi, about her getting married to Kaifi
Azmi and the whole romance of it. She completely presents it in this romantic
mode. And I felt that obviously, if I had taken the dry historiographical
stance here that kind of detail doesn’t really matter. It is of no consequence
that she was in love with this poet and she asked her barrister father in
Hyderabad, can I marry this poet who lives in a commune in Bombay? Which is why
I felt that the story could not have been told if one were to simply retrace
the events and tell what happened.
I
always remember Shaukat and Kaifi in that sense. Today they are upheld as great
IPTA people. But, heck, it was just romance. I don’t think it would have
mattered to Shaukat that Kaifi was a communist. She was just drawn to this poet
living in a commune.
I
feel that just this particular dilemma between the artist and the ideologue is
to me enough of a conflict to create a whole narrative around. I feel that very
strongly. And it is at the heart of the whole business.
What
I would like to develop is a screenplay based on this archive, although “develop
a screenplay” sounds like a petri-dish kind of activity. But I would like very
much for a film to be made on the subject, a feature film.
I
had a question about the form you used in your film when you had these figures
in the dark and then turned the spotlights on them. Why did you choose that
mode?
Lalit:
Well, see, the original plan was to do something with the old black and white
photographs of Machine and Aurat. Then, increasingly, as I started spending
time with JANAM, two things happened. First I realized that Machine and Aurat
were JANAM’s most important plays, and
had
been performed the most in the street theatre form. Another filmmaker, Sherna
Dastoor, had already documented parts of these two plays in her film. So I
reverted back to the original idea of doing something as cut points from black
and white photographs of these plays.
I
also felt that a play like Machine was harking back to the era of Soviet formalism—the
films of Eisenstein came to mind. My cameraman Mrinal and I decided to show
Machine on stage. Use the advantages of cinema, isolate the action, break up the
action and cut it together. Lots of the decisions were made—we didn’t have the
time to plan it— they were just made there and then. JANAM showed up having
done their lines, we just blocked the stage. We never directed JANAM at any
point. That is the only point in the film where we blocked them. The other interesting
thing is what happens when you take a group that has been doing these plays in
the street theatre form, and place them on a stage.
Interestingly,
JANAM liked this stuff. I think part of the motivation was that these were both
plays that had been done a lot. So it was as if they were coming from another
era. So you say, okay, we’ll do it in a stylized form. It’s almost like a
tribute.
Jagan:
I found it interesting because you do also have street performances in the
film. I particularly liked this one performance in Uttaranchal. The play
finishes and you start walking with one of the spectators and you ask him what
he has to say and he kind of avoids the question and he walks off. I found that
very interesting.
I
think something has happened to street performance. An audience which is
perhaps knowledgeable
about
the background to JANAM and its street work probably won’t get the same
stimulation as they would by looking at what you have done—transposing it into
a proscenium format. Perhaps because ultimately on film you can’t capture
street performance adequately. You have to capture all of these other reactions
and only then you get the full experience of it. And yet you can’t. People
aren’t forthcoming with reactions.
Lalit:
I think you have touched on a very important point. This is something that I
was really finding very difficult to do, to capture a street play in its
totality. When you are filming, it is always fragmented, you are picking up on
little bits. And of course that is the nature of the video film medium, where
you take fragments and you put it together. But you still can’t capture the
feeling of the street theatre form because somebody is laughing behind you,
somebody is reacting. You can hear some of these things and pick up that
energy. But to try and film those fragments is inevitably to lose stuff.
The
other thing is capturing the audience response to a play. I remember Anjum’s
[Hasan of IFA] comments on the film. She said,“What do people really think
about JANAM’s plays, that’s something we don’t really get an idea of. ”
Sudhanva [Deshpande of JANAM] had a different kind of response. There was a
feeling, at least in the beginning when they saw that first rough cut, that
maybe JANAM doesn’t look so good. The response from the audience ranged from
indifferent to the negative. Indifference mostly, I would say.
The
most honest kind of response that I got was when something happened there and
then. So if
I
was able to capture laughter during a scene, then that was an honest response.
The moment you
went
to people after the event, everybody just came up with these clichés —“Oh yes,
yes! Very good play!
There
should be Hindu-Muslim harmony. Politicians should not instigate riots. ”But
there was no insight about the play. I was just getting these completely
canned, thought-out responses. I’m sure if we had more time we could have gone back
a day later and sat quietly and got people to reflect—okay now, what did that
play do for you? What are the parts of the play you understood?
What
are the parts of the play you didn’t understand? Also, JANAM uses such a
diverse range of components. For instance in the play Yeh Dil Maange More
Guruji [on the 2002 Gujarat riots], they use text, they use pictures, the
photographs of the riots. Then they use these very powerful poems. And then they
use a lot of slapstick humour. Now what is the part that is working for
audiences in general? Of course there are different responses. But what are the
parts that are working and what are the parts that are not working? I think, if
you really want to get into audience response and reaction, you will have to go
more into details like this.
Jagan:
I find it fascinating because the aspect of live performance is again integral
to the whole IPTA story and is the most celebrated part of it—Amar Sheikh
standing in front of 20,000 farmers and belting out a song without
loudspeakers. This is the aura of performance, which perhaps because of the
influence of television, we have lost. One almost feels that one is doing
children’s theatre when one has to do political theatre in that way. It’s
proselytisation of a certain kind, the feeling that you can’t defer that responsibility.
You have to educate. What I got from your film was really to see those two
things together in one film—the more abstract proscenium mode and the actual
live street performance. I’ve got to admit that I found the abstract mode far more
communicative in some strange kind of way. And I think that’s got to do with
the formation of our own viewership really. I think even the street play needs
to be re-invented.
And
perhaps it’s got to do with what kind of consciousness one is appealing to. I
think we assume that class is an issue for everyone. We assume that a struggle,
for instance, is a reality for everyone. And yet perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps it
is a projection onto the common mass that we deal with as an audience.
Lalit:
I’m going to pick up on something very interesting you just said, which is
about the aura of the performance. Now talking about JANAM, I saw their
photographs from the late 1970s and 1980s and
there
were these incredible photographs, where there are huge audiences, masses,
swarms of people, just watching. Obviously we are talking about a time that
predated television as it exists now. When I talk to JANAM about it, one aspect
that they talk a lot about is how difficult the State has made it to perform in
spaces. So you can’t have big performances in Connaught Place, you can’t
perform outside embassies, you can’t perform at the Boat Club [in Delhi]
anymore. But it’s very interesting how one sees a change in a lot of JANAM’s
work in the sense that the plays are now crafted to bring in a
television-watching audience. For instance—this is not there in my film—but in
the play Yeh Dil Maange More, Guruji the very theme song is based on a Pepsi
commercial. The tune is taken from there. And they do this a lot with some of
the contemporary plays. It’s sort of drawing in a television audience with a
few gags. Now I’m getting back to IPTA. When you talked about the aura of street
performance there were these big proscenium productions done for which huge
stages were erected, and masses and masses of people came. Did you find
photographs of stuff like this? There must have been oral testimonies also of
people just talking about the feeling. Can you just tell me a little about
that?
Jagan:
There is a lot of oral testimony. But there is very little photographic information
that I could get out. I found in doing the research— and I think this is a
comment on our consciousness really—that there is a high level of appreciation
now for the value of an image. And so increasingly I found, as I met more and
more people, that they were not as forthcoming with photographic evidence as
they were willing to talk. There is the aura to the photograph and there is a
value to it. I found that
very
interesting—the notion that a photographic image or a photographic record is
something that has value and you don’t have to necessarily share it with
somebody until you get a certain price. Why it mattered, of course, was that I
had hoped to find a lot of photographs and make copies of them. But people weren’t willing to let me do that.
Lalit:
It’s very interesting to me that you say that you came across people who were
trying to hold on to the photographs until they got a price.
Because
with JANAM, they could have very well turned around and said, “Look, there is a
certain set of photographs that we think are relevant that you can film and
there is another set of stills. That we are absolutely not sharing with you. ”
But there was just this complete openness. Despite the fact that they knew that
I was not making a film for them, that I was eventually going to make my film independently.
This is a group that is around and performing today and they have that much
more at stake.
Jagan:
They don’t. What I mean is that the larger IPTA organisation is so loose and so
fragmented. There isn’t the oneness. There isn’t the identification with a
single IPTA. It’s become a banner. I mean,
it’s become only a banner. And people who are part of the IPTA organisation
admit that it’s a banner. Whereas I came in with the view that if it has to be IPTA,
then it must have some semblance of connection with what IPTA stood for in the
beginning.
Now
I find it to be a sort of wishy-washy attitude. I think it’s a chapter that
needs to be looked at in a certain way. Some things might need closure and
other things might need to be opened up. But I think the IPTA story is
certainly not over. But it’s not a story which can be told again and again in the
same beaten way.
Courtesy:
Art Connect, Volume 1, Number 1 July-December 2007
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