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Indian English Drama under the Influence of Existentialism Bisma Khursheed Research Scholar Sri Venkateshwara University Uttar Pradesh India Abstract: The present paper tries to explore the origin and emergence of the Indian Drama as an important and independent genre and analyzes the influence of Existentialism on the Indian English Drama. The pre-independence Indian English Drama is notable for its commitment to human and moral values, symbolic significance, technical virtuosity, thematic variety and poetic excellence, yet it was not much geared for the actual stage production, where as the post independent Indian English Drama was greatly benefitted by the growing interest of the foreign countries in Indian English literature in general and Indian English Drama in particular. The contemporary Indian English Drama is innovative and experimental in terms of technical and thematic qualities. It does not spring out of any specific tradition, rather reinvestigates folk lore, religion, myth, legend and history, thereby laying a foundation of a distinctive tradition in the history of world drama. Introduction: An eminent Indian philosopher, Prof. Radhakrishnan, remarks that Existentialism is nothing but a new name for our ancient philosophical vision which can concentrate on Buddhism and the Upanishad- ‘knowledge of the self or Atmanam Viddhi’. According to the Upanishads, man is a victim, a sufferer of sheer ignorance (avidhya), which nurtures selfishness. Since this feeling of distress is universal, a sense of blankness overtakes the seeking spirit which makes the world a waste a false drama of feelings. Man is, after all, not a final resting place and he has to be transcended which is the ultimate goal of life. Man can free himself from sorrow and suffering by becoming aware of the eternal. This awareness and enlightenment is known as jnana or bodhi (Sartre 1956:263). As soon as India got its independence from the colonial rule, there was a great surge of patriotism in the world of letters, with novelists, dramatists, philosophers from across the nation taking a pledge to discover their roots in the native discourses, indigenous narrative, artistic and dramatic traditions. In the Indian English fiction, Existentialism in the form of realism is discernable in the works of many novelists like Khushwant Singh, Anita Desai, Kamala Markandeya, Manohar Malgonkar, Bhabani Bhattacharya, R K Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and a few others who portray Indian life in its economic, socio-cultural, political milieu and who put forth the cause of the underprivledged and the have-nots. The post colonial quest for identity began to reap results with quite many Indian playwrights like Badal Sarkar, Girish Karnad, Mohan Rakesh and Vijay Tendulkar, churning out plays with a combination of techniques and styles taken from Sanskrit medieval and Western theatre (Barman 2006: 142,143). www.ijellh.com 531 India has a very rich heritage of Drama and the origin of Indian theatre is in the vedic period. Natyasastra, the oldest texts on the theory of Drama, reveals that Drama began its journey with the Sanskrit plays, where as the Indian English Drama traces its origin in the ancient rituals and seasonal festivities of the Vedic Aryans. The events from the Vedas mainly where enacted in the dramas which gradually got replaced by episodes from the Bhagvadgita, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The episode of the killing of Ravana is one such popular performance which is still enacted in different parts of the country during the time of Dussehra. Similarly, the origin of Sanskrit Drama dates back to 1000 BC. Sanskrit literature is classified into Sravya (that can be heard or recited) and Drishya (that can be seen or exhibited). Drama falls under Drishya and poetry in all forms falls under Sravya. Drama in Sanskrit Literature is usually covered under the broad umberalla of Rupaka, which means depiction of life in its various forms by actors who assume various roles. It was Bharata who ascribed a divine origin to drama and considered it as the fifth Veda (Bharat Gupta 1994:86). According to Bharata, the Drama uses the eight basic emotions of wonder, aversion, fear, pride, sadness, anger, joy (humour) and love, attempting to resolve them in the ninth holistic feeling of peace. The most celebrated dramatists of the ancient era are: Rajeshkhora, Bhattanarayana, Murari, Visha-Khadatta, Bhavabhuti, Harsha, Kalidas, Shudraka, Bhasa and Ashwaghosh, whose classical works enriched the Indian theatre. And undoubtedly in Kalidasa lies the supreme achievement of Indian Drama, who is often referred to as Shakespeare of India. In India, the Sanskrit drama flourished in its glory till the twelfth century, when the Mohammedan intrusion shifted the Sanskrit stage. But till the fifteenth century, Sanskrit plays were performed on stage in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Chennai. Then due to the foreign invasions, the Indian Dramatic activity almost ceased. And from the seventeenth Century onwards, the beginnings of Loknatya (People’s Theatre) are noticed in every Indian state. Rise of the modern drama dates back to eighteenth century when British Empire strengthened its power in India. Krishna Kriplani points out that the modern Indian drama ‘owed its first flowering to the foreign grafting’. A new renaissance dawned on Indian arts including drama, due to the impact of western civilization on Indian life. Moreover, English education gave an impetus and a momentum to the critical study of not just the Western drama but the classical Indian Drama as well. The Italian and the English dramatic troupes toured India and performed many English plays mainly Shakespearean in cities like Bombay and Madras. In India the English Drama gained a dimension with the establishment of the three Presidency Towns by the British: Mumbai, Calcutta and Madras. These metropolises, through the grace of English Drama, excellently exemplified the true aura of the contemporary art forms. The harmonised eastern and western philosophy coupled with the British imperialism made English drama in India a brilliant manifestation of the British exploitation, their culture and way of life, hence crafting a marked change in the dramatic art and the storyline. Although in 1765, Horasin Lebdef, a Russian drama lover and Quloknath, a Bengali drama lover, staged two English comedies “Love is the Best Doctor’ and ‘Disgaig’, but the real beginning was www.ijellh.com 532 when Prasanna Kumar Thakur in 1831 established the “Hindu Rangmanch” at Calcutta and staged Wilsun’s English translation of Bhavabhuti’s Sanskrit drama ‘Uttar Ramacharitan’. The artistic dramas of Rabindranath Tagore, historical dramas of D L Roy and social drama of Girish Chanda Ghosh continued to reach up to the stage of realistic dramas during the Second World War and the worst ever famines of Bengal. In 1852-53, the whole country was influenced by the famous Parsi Theatre that was launched in Bombay. The pioneer in establishing the Parsi Theatre Company in India was Pastogi Pharmji. The Parsi Theatre Company prompted the growth of many new theatre companies. On the other hand, Bharatendu Harishchandra developed the amateur theatre with his works and hence is rightly acclaimed as the Father of Hindi drama. Though Krishna Mohan Banerji’s The Persecuted (1837) started the Indian English Drama, the actual journey of Indian English Drama begins with the appearance of Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s Is This Civilization? on the literary horizon. The two great sage poets of India, Sri Aurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore, are the first Indian dramatists in English. Although Rabindranath Tagore wrote primarily in Bengali, yet all his Bengali writings are available to us in English renderings. Some of his prominent plays like The Mother’s Prayer, Chandalika, Sacrifice, The Post Office and Chitra are firmly rooted in the Indian ethos so far as their treatment, characters and themes are concerned. R K Ramaswamy finds a depth and gravity of purpose in his dramatic art: More than anything else, he has shown the way both in respect of ideas as well of methods, by which the soul of India could be realized and revealed in the realm of dramatic creation and representation. (Ramaswamy 1985:226) Another prominent dramatist in Indian English Drama, Sri Aurobindo, wrote five complete blank verse plays which show a deep influence of Elizebethan Drama in matters of characterization and plot construction, in addition to the impact of Sanskrit playwrights like Bhavabhuti, Kalidas and Bhasa on Aurobindo. As Dr K R S Iyengar observes: But all five plays are stepped in poetry and romance, recalling the spirit and flavour of the distinctive dramatic type exemplified in different ways by Bhasa, Kalidas and Bhavabhuti. Though, of course all have Aurobindonian undertones. (1982:40) Harindranath Chattopadhay is another playwright who has made significant contribution in the growth of Indian English drama with Abu Hassan (1918) and seven verse plays based on the lives of Indian saints. A S P Ayyar is another great name who wrote six plays and P A Krishnaswamy made a mark with his unusual verse play ‘The Flute of Krishna’. T P Kailasan is yet another dramatic voice on the Indian literary scene who wrote both in English and Kannada. Although Kailasan is regarded as the Father of modern Kannada drama, his English Plays such as The Burden (1933), The Purpose (1944), Karna (1964) and Keechaka(1949). Amur rightly remarks: A talented actor who appeared on the amateur as well as the professional stage, he brought to the writing of drama an intimate knowledge of the theatre. It is for this reason that his plays whether in Kannada or English, have a uniform technical excellence. (1948:47) Another remarkable modern playwright during the colonial era of Indian English Drama is a woman named Bharati Sarabhai who wrote two successful plays: The Well of the People (1943) and Two Women. The last great name in the pre-Independence Indian English Drama www.ijellh.com 533 is Lobo Prabhu who penned down a dozen plays but only Mother of New India: a Play of Indain Village in Three Acts (1944) and Death Abdicates (1945) appear before Independence. In 1956, his collected plays were published. Though the pre-independence Indian English Drama is notable for its commitment to human and moral values, symbolic significance, technical virtuosity, thematic variety and poetic excellence, yet it was not much geared for the actual stage production, where as the post independent Indian English Drama was greatly benefitted by the growing interest of the foreign countries in Indian English literature in general and Indian English Drama in particular. A large number of plays by Indian playwrights Gurucharan Das, Pratap Sharma and Asif Currimbhoy were successfully staged in England and USA. But due to theatre’s monopoly in the Indian regional languages, there was unfortunately no regular school of Indian English Drama in India. Though the plays were penned down in prose but still poetic plays also survive in the post colonial era. M K Naik rightly states that “...Tagore-Aurobindo-Kailsam tradition of poetic drama continues, but with a difference in the hands of Manjeri Isvaran, G V Desani, Lakhan Dev and Pretish Nandy.” (Amur 1977:186) Yama and Yami (1948) by Manjeri Isvaran is a dialogue in poetic prose, with a prologue and an epilogue, dealing with the incestuous love of Yami for her brother. And Hali (1950) an entirely different kind of play by GV Desani, was highly praised for its originality, rich imagery and symbolism. M K Naik regarding the message of the play Hali remarks, “ Hali finds peace in the thought that man must transcend human love, go beyond life and death and even leaving behind his limited idea of godhead, develops in himself a god like love and detachment (1995:256) The other verse plays of the period include : S Raman’s Karme (1979), Lakhan Dev’s Tiger Claw (1976), P S Vasudev’s The Sunflower(1972), Sree Devi Singh’s The Purple Braided People (1970), Hushmat Sozerekashme’s Vikramjeet (1970), Pritish nandy’s Rites for a Plebian Salute(1969), Satya Dev Jaggi’s The Point of Light (1967), S D Rawoot’s Immoral song, M Krishnamurti’s The Cloth of Gold (1951) and P A Krishnaswami’s The Flute of Krishna (1950). Prose playwrights outnumber the verse playwrights. Asif Currimbhoy is the most prolific playwright of the post independence period who has written and published more than 30 plays which include The Tourist Mecca (1959), The Restaurant (1960), The Doldrumness (1960), The Captives (1963), Goa (1964), Monsoon (1965), An Experiment With Truth (1969), Inquilab (1970), The Refugee (1971), Sonar Bangla(1972), Angkor (1973) and The Dessident M L A (1974). Although comprehensive, Currimbhoy’s dramatic art has been many a times subjected to criticism due to embellished language and the lack of structured plot and balanced characterization. There is a reflection of extreme poverty of invention and language in his dialogue which is unsuitable to capture the internal drama of the clash of motives. A Touch of Brightness (1968) and The Professor has a War Cry (1970) are Pratap Sharma’s two prose plays which were successfully staged in India due to predominant theme of sex. Prof M K Naik appreciates his dramatic art for his keen sense of situation and effective dialogues (1995:260) www.ijellh.com 534 Nissim Ezekiel is highly acknowledged for his rare dramatic sensibility and exceptional poetic creed in the realm of Indian drama. His Three Plays (1969) including The Sleep Walkers: An Indo- American Farce, Marrigae Poem : A Tragic Comedy and Nalini: A Comedy are considered to be a welcome addition to the dramaturgy of Indian English Drama. In his exposure of prose and presence, Ezekiel comes very close to the spirit of some English social satirist. (Karnani 1974:126) The contemporary Indian English Drama is innovative and experimental in terms of technical and thematic qualities. It does not spring out of any specific tradition, rather re-investigates folk lore, religion, myth, legend and history, thereby laying a foundation of a distinctive tradition in the history of world drama. Girish Karnad, Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sirkar and Vijay Tendulkar evolved a cumulative theatrical tradition which prepared the background of contemporary Indian English Theatre. Karnad remarkably enriched the tradition of Indian English Theatre in the capacity of a writer, director and an actor. The touring Natak companies moulded his dramatic sensibility esp. Yakshagana which was not accepted as the purified art form in those days. He borrowed his plots for his well-known plays –Yayati (1961), Tughlaq (1962), Hayavadana(1970) and Nagamandala(1972), from the old legends, mythology and history but he established their relevance in contemporary socio-political conditions with an intricate symbolism. The Indian theatre also got a rich, challenging repertoire from Vijay Tendulkar’s very first play Grihasth (1955) to Safar in 1992. Focussing on the middle class society, Tendulkar symbolizes the new attempts and awareness of the Indian dramatists of the century to depict suffocations, agonies and cries of man. In almost all his plays, he focuses on the theme of confrontation and isolation of the indivisual with the hostile surroundings. In most of his plays, Tendulkar influenced by Artand, relates the problem of anguish to the theme of violence. For him the occurrence of human violence is not something loathsome or disgusting in as much as it is in human nature. He says, “Unlike the communists I don’t think violence can be eliminated in a classless society, or for that matter in any society. The spirit of aggression is something that human being is born with. Not that it is bad. Without violence man might have turned into a vegetable. (Mohanty 1995:14) Tendulkar keeps violence raw and natural while depicting it on stage and does not dress it up with any fancy trapping so as to make it palatable. Another prestigious name in the realm of contemporary theatre is Badal Sirkar, who represents ‘New Theatrical Movement’ in India. He is the creator of the “Purple Theatre” which is created and supported by people. A humourous play like Solution X marks the beginning of his dramatic career. While Evan Inderjit (1962), The Other History (1964), There is No End (1971), his earlier plays are based on existential, psychological, social and political problems. Later the concept of Third Theatre is the basis of his plays like Stale News and Procession. The influence of Mohan Rakesh in Indian English Drama cannot be ignored. Mohan Rakesh originally wrote in Hindi but was later translated in English and other regional languages. His famous plays include Asadh Ka Ek Din (1958), Leharon Ke Rajhansa (1963) and Adhe Adheere (1969). The portrayal of the crisis of contemporary man caught in the web of www.ijellh.com 535 persistent threat to human relationship and uncongenial surroundings was his main concern as a playwright. On the other hand, the soil of Indian drama was also enriched by various women dramatists who ardently projected the inner world of feminine psyche in the theatre. Women’s theatre is in congruence with Street Theatre movement, wherein same technique of performance and production is used. Women writers largely expressed their resentment against the politics of exploitation on the basis of gender description; hence it can be attributed as the ‘Theatre of Protest’. The traditional myths of Sita and Savitri were also revived and there was re-interpretationof the epics from the feminine point of view. The category includes the dramatic work of Usha Ganguli and Mahasweta Devi. One of the best playwrights of the Indian soil include Mahesh Dattani, who was born in Bangalore on seventh August 1958. His preference for English helped tremendously in representing the Indian sensibilty in the wake of globalization. His famous plays include Tara, Dance like a Man, Final Solutions, Where There is a Will. Hence it can be clearly stated that the genre Indian English Drama began with Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s play Is This Civilization? (1871) followed by P V Ramaswamy Raju’s Urjoon Sing or The Princess Regained (1875), D.H Wadia’s The Indian Heroine (1877), Ramkinoo Dutt’s Manipura Tragedy (1893) and Sarat Kumar Ghose’s The New Krishna (1909) had to wait for publication of the translation of Rabindrnath Tagore’s The Post Office from his Bengali original. Then there was Harindranath ChattoPadhyaya whose plays came out mainly between 1918-1925 and one in 1956. Vasudeva Rao, A S Raman, T P Kailasam, A S Panchpakesha Aiyer are some other important playwrights of the pre-independence period. On the other hand the post-independence period marked production of not just a larger number of plays but also better quality of the same. These include plays written by Pratap Sharma, Santha Rama Rao, Gurucharan Das, G V Desani, Girish Karnad, Badal Sircar, Nissim Ezeliel, Asif Currimbhoy and Aurobindo.but still Indian Drama lagged behind fiction and poetry due to lack of training in the ‘living theatre’ in case of playwrights and expressing one’s own emotions and feelings in a non native language which surely makes a difference (Raja Rao). Although not all plays make a good theatre, yet Sri Aurobindo’s Vasavadutta(1957) and Perseus The Deliverer(1943), or Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq (1972) or Tagore’s Natir Puja(1926) and Chandalika(1933) have in them elements of good theatre- wherein music, dance, spectacle, surprise, suspense, irony, declamatory speeches, powerful dialogues, great and memorable characters sustain a well developed plot. Rabindranath Tagore’s plays were greatly acclaimed both in India and abroad and Gieve Patel’s Princes Asif Currimbhoy’s play The Doldrummer’s (1960) too have been great stage performances. But due to various reasons other than quality, these plays did not make for box office success and country wide fame and recognition. Owing to the rise of cinema and TV, there was a major decline of the theatre in India in addition to very little public patronage for plays in English and very less number of theatres and audience groups which could ensure commercial and moral support to the Indian theatre in English. Also the unfavourable criticism in the form of easy www.ijellh.com 536 generalisation and hasty judgements not based on careful study and assessment, led to the low reputation of the Indian Drama in English. The scholarly attention seems to focus on the ‘theatrical’ dimension of a play at the expense of aesthetic and literary dimensions, hence there is a very little balanced and well informed criticism on the subject. Indian drama in English has made fruitful experiments and bold innovations in terms of both technical virtuosities and thematic concerns during the post World War period. There has been an increasing turn towards myth, folklore, history, legend which has reaped splendid results. Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sircar, Vijay Tendulkar and Girish Karnad have remained the most representative of the contemporary Indian drama not only in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Kannada respectively but also on the pan-Indian level (Iyengar, 2004:20). They find Man at the centre of the universe and consider his choice of freedom as a turning point in his life just like other major existential thinkers Sartre, Brecht and Camus do. The characters in the plays of these post modern Indian English dramatists are generally victims of existential sufferings and appear like lonely figures with split personalities and divided self. In their plays, Man is represented as the creator of himself and his inwardness and indivisuality leads him to a state of outsiderism, absurdity, purposelessness, rootlessness, alienation, agony, loneliness and strangeness of situations. He is always in search for identity and quest for completeness and his indivisual alienation keeps him away from his ‘Self’ and ‘Loss’ of his world. Man is chained in his own hell which is created by the choice of freedom and he endlessly suffers with a hope to find his ground under his feet. This generates meaninglessness, purposelessness and helplessness of man and hence this condition is extremely crucial, painful, experiential as well as existential. After independence, the nature of English drama in India underwent a drastic change wherein it was not only a representation of the European lifestyle but a lot more. It became a typical art form in epitomizing the socio-political and economic status of the Independent nation. With the advent of the eminent theatre personalities like Habib Tanvir, Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad, K N Pannikar and many others, the rich chronicle of Indian drama (the colossal history of Indain Natya), witnessed a marked change. These eminent writers further carried the English Drama in English to maturity. The full blend of east and west, continuous study and a deep understanding has enormously helped English Drama in India to emerge as a distinct art form, with its own remarkable pride and dignity. This was the time when World War II had adversely traumatised Europe and eventually the existential philosophy became a pristine refuge and emerged both as an artistic discourse and a wholesome philosophy. Even in India, the writers started deriving and extracting the themes of existentialism from the native classical traditional folklore and writings. There was display of increasing inwardness in themes by writers after 1950s. Arun Joshi and Anita Desai, the major Existential writers in the Indian English Literature, dealt with the themes of the inner man, exploration of psyche, rootlessness and loneliness. The other eminent writers who potrayed the existential problems of man are Upamanyu Chatterjee, Chandrashekara Patil, Chandrashekara Kambar, P. Lankesh, Rohinton Mistry, V S Naipaul, Amitav Ghosh, Chitra Banerjee, Githa Hariharan, Bharati Mukherjee, Chaman Nahal, Shashi Deshpande, Ruth Prawer Thabvala, Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sehgal. www.ijellh.com 537 Another important playwright Badal Sirkar, also projected existential attitude of modern life. His plays like Stale News, Bhoma and Procession were based on the Third Theatre. He stood in the forefront of a new theatrical movement in India and was popularly known as the ‘barefoot playwright’. His play Procession, depicts a “real home” a new society based on equality. It shows real way to a new society wherein man does not have to live by exploiting others as everyone works according to his or her ability and hence gets according to one’s needs. This brutal or anti-realty has been explored by some modernists like Girish Karnad, Vijay Tendulkar, C T Khanolkar, Mahesh Elkunchvar, Anil Brave, who point to this sterile situation leading to no situation through theatre of violence and absurd drama. Certain playwrights like Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad and Badal Sirkar, unrelentlessly pursued such themes and entertained huge audiences. www.ijellh.com 538 Works cited: 1. Iyengar, K R S. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Sterling, 1985. 2. Naik, MK. A History of Indian English Literature. New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1995. 3. Naik, M K (Ed.). 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