Abstract
The relationship between art and politics, or more specifically, the conscious use of art as and in politics has had a history of perhaps a century. Over this period, cultural movements of the Left have had a key role to play in setting the agenda and defining important contours of why and how theatre, visual arts, literature and music can be used to convey resistance. This history is replete with diverse experiences, successes as well as disappointments, and the movements have produced vast repertoires of creative output, both formally documented and undocumented. The various aspects of the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the cultural movements of the Left have also been part of vigorous international and country/region-specific debates from about the third decade of the 20th century. While looking at art as distinctly socially embedded and hence political, these debates have been about the role of individuals in collective movements, the limits, if any, of aesthetic expression in the use of art for political mobilisation, the relevance or importance of particular forms in conveying political messages, the relative importance of form or content in art, to name a few. The histories and experiences of political cultural movements or organisations are bound to reveal several, if not all, of these complex issues, as part of their own existence, as well as in the context of knowledge about other experiences.
Arjun Ghosh’s book traces the history of an important political theatre group in Delhi, the Jana Natya Manch or Janam, as it is commonly known. Formed in 1973 to take good quality, vigorous political theatre to working class audiences, Janam is a group that, as playwright and scholar G.P. Deshpande states in the Foreword, has perhaps the richest and most consistent use of the agitprop, combined with a deep commitment to the organised left. Known for its innovations and success in politics, especially street theatre, particularly from the late 1970s, Janam was catapulted into the limelight with the murder of the group’s founder-member and convenor, Safdar Hashmi. This was part of a brutal attack on the group in late December 1988 by goons of the ruling Congress Party, while they were performing a street play about trade union issues in a working class area in Sahibabad, an industrial area in the outskirts of Delhi. The play, which had been performed before to mobilise workers for a trade union strike called by the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), was then being performed during an election campaign in support of a candidate put up by the CPI(M), the party that Janam has had close associations with. The political uproar and outrage that Safdar Hashmi’s murder caused also called attention to the impact of Janam’s theatre, especially to the fact that a theatre performance could be such a political threat to the establishment.
The Introduction uses three significant moments in Janam’s history to lay out significant milestones that are factual, but also point to analytical issues that are raised at various points in the book. These three moments are the point where Janam decided to move from performing proscenium plays to street theatre as the author evocatively quotes Safdar Hashmi who said, ‘from large plays to small plays’ in the late 1970s; the moment in 1988 when they decided to go back to performing proscenium plays in addition to street theatre; and the third moment when Safdar Hashmi was assassinated in the last days of 1988.
The book has 10 chapters apart from the Introduction and is divided into two parts. The first part, with four chapters, is a chronological description of events from 1973 to the present, divided into four phases, namely, the initial years, 1973–80; 1981–88, a period of consolidation until Safdar’s death; the years 1989–94 after Safdar’s martyrdom; and what the author refers to as a new phase, the period from 1995 to the present.
The second part, consisting of six chapters, records some aspects of Janam’s creative process, its collaborative proscenium productions with leading Indian theatre personalities like G.P. Deshpande, Habib Tanvir and others, the experiences and tribulations of organisational functioning, and the negotiation of diverse and often difficult spaces and audiences in and around the city of Delhi. Across different chapters, Ghosh raises issues, such as, the relationship between Janam and the CPI(M), Janam’s positions regarding the role of art and culture in political interventions, the role of individuals in collectives and the experience of collective theatre. He takes examples from the experiences of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), in whose cultural and political tradition Janam was set up, to compare and arrive at conclusions regarding Janam’s tackling of vexed issues. The IPTA, about which Ghosh provides some information, had faced serious difficulties around some of these issues, like Left cultural movements in different parts of the world, even while generating large repertoires of creative work across diverse mediums and forms, which became legendary across different parts of India.
The book is a valuable biography of an important political theatre group and contains a detailed chronicling of events, milestones and processes that Janam has been through. However, it aims to go beyond that by providing analysis as well as a critical assessment of Janam’s contribution to the cultural political movement. Surprisingly, in this respect, it hardly refers to any of the voluminous literature that exists in the area which looks at theoretical debates or documents as well as analyses experiences of agitprop from around the world. It uses details from Janam’s own experience to arrive at what seem like descriptive assertions about Janam’s solutions to commonly experienced problems in a group of its kind, rather than a nuanced comparative perspective. For example, there is very little reference to experiences of other groups around the country that have worked with objectives similar to those of Janam, especially those with links to political movements of the Left.
As a chronicling and biographical exercise, the book’s contribution is crucial, as it points to the real conditions that govern cultural–political practice, something that has hardly been analysed in studies of cultural history in India.