Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T01:19:18.904Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Classroom to Public Space: Creating a New Theatrical Public Sphere in Early Independent India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2018

MANJARI MUKHERJEE
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Though India declared itself a sovereign nation only in 1947, after two hundred years of British rule, its people had unleashed the processes of ‘Indianization’ well before independence. While addressing the transition from colonial subjecthood to independent citizenship is intricately linked to efforts of decolonization, the role of English-medium education in the creation of a new emergent class of independent Indian citizens often gets overlooked. This essay analyses the immediate impact of independence (1947–50), and locates the educational spaces where Indians (predominantly elite Bengalis) were struggling to unlink citizenship from nationalism and exploring inter-community relationships such as those between the Bengali elite and the micro-minority Jews, Parsis, Armenians and Anglo-Indians. I show how theatre activities by the students of St Xavier's Collegiate School and College, their new roles as potential public intellectuals and citizens of post-independent India and their theatre constituted an important intervention in the new democratic processes. I examine the duality of a Bengali elite who acquired an English-medium education and performed English-style Shakespeare while trying to construct a political dramaturgy as an ensemble or collective.

Type
Essays: Pedagogies of Citizenship: Performance, Institutions and Gendering
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , October 2017 , pp. 327 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1 Andrews, Robyn, ‘English in India: Reflections Based on Fieldwork among Anglo-Indians in Kolkata’, India Review, 5, 3–4 (2006), pp. 499–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Laura Charlotte Bear, ‘Traveling Modernity: Capitalism, Community and Nation in the Colonial Governance of the Indian Railways’ (dissertation, University of Michigan, 1998), p. 18, at http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqm&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:9825169, accessed 31 August 2017.

3 Blunt, Alison, Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), p. 19.Google Scholar

4 Tete, Peter, A Missionary Social Worker in India: JB Hoffmann, the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act and the Catholic Co-operatives, 1893–1928 (London: Gregorian Biblical BookShop, 1984), pp. 128–31.Google Scholar

5 Antoinette Iris Grace Lobo, ‘A Comparative Study of Educational Disadvantage in India within the Anglo-Indian Community: A Historical and Contemporary Analysis’ (dissertation, University of London, 1994), p. 326, at http://international-journal-of-anglo-indian-studies.org/index.php/IJAIS/article/download/76/69, accessed 31 August 2017.

6 Ridout, Nicholas, Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism and Love (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2013), p. 4.Google Scholar

7 Rudby, Rani and Tan, Peter, eds., Language as Commodity: Global Structures, Local Marketplaces (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008), p. 137.Google Scholar

8 Bandopadhyay, Samik, ‘Theatre: From Metropolis to Wasteland’, in Karlekar, Hiranmay, ed., Independent India: The First Fifty Years (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 419–28, here p. 419.Google Scholar

9 Bandopadhyay, ‘Theatre’, p. 419.

10 Kuldip Singh, ‘Obituary: Geoffrey Kendal’, The Independent, 15 June 1998, at www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-geoffrey-kendal-1165113.html, accessed 10 June 2016.

11 Dutt, Utpal, Towards A Revolutionary Theatre (Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2009), p. i.Google Scholar

12 Interview with Utpal Dutt, ‘Taking Shakespeare to the Common Man’, originally published in Oxygen News, Shakespeare Quatercentenary Supplement, 1964; reprinted in Epic Theatre (Calcutta), March 1999, p. 19.

13 Ibid.

14 Bekhor, Sol, ‘Happy Memories: Our Student Days. Birth of the Little Theatre’, Epic Theatre (Calcutta), March 1996, p. 50.Google Scholar

15 Interview of Utpal Dutt by Samik Bandopadhyay, 3–17 September 1989, Sudrak Collection, 10 (Autumn 1400 (Bengali year)), p. 125.

16 Lal, Ananda and Chaudhuri, Sukanta, eds., Shakespeare on the Calcutta Stage: A Checklist (Kolkata: Papyrus, 2001), p. 71.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. 71. In addition to Dutt as Brutus, the cast featured Ellis Abraham as Caesar, Protap Roy as Cassius, Jeffrey Isaac as Mark Antony, Ranjit Chatterji as Octavius, Richard Brooks as Casca, Philip Raymond as Decius Brutus and Haskell David as Cinna.

18 Lal and Chaudhuri, Shakespeare on the Calcutta Stage, pp. 71–2.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Solomon Bekhor, ‘Recalling Jewish Calcutta’, at www.jewishcalcutta.in/index.php/items/show/1217, accessed 10 January 2016.

24 Mukherjee, Sushil Kumar, The Story of The Calcutta Theatres (1753–1980) (Kolkata: K. P. Bagchi, 1982), p. 370.Google Scholar

25 Utpal Dutt, Towards A Revolutionary Theatre, p. 12.

26 Interview with Utpal Dutt, Epic Theatre (Calcutta), March 1996, pp. 47–53.