The sorrow over partition at play

Kamal Baruah

(kamal.baruah@yahoo.com)

Pandemic forced people to close their doors to the outside and real world, thereby making social media platforms the most accepted fact of the current trend. With high-speed network connectivity, streaming television and web series have taken a huge plunge in recent years, and performing arts like theatre have lost their charm over the last decade. Unlike Britishers, who promote Shakespeare dramas in English, there is no such effort to promote India’s theatre.

However, Assam’s unique mobile drama tradition takes centre stage in a changing world. This is the most encouraging, when live performers’ present the experience of a real or imagined dramatic performance of plays before a live audience on a stage that is especially inspired by the rural setup. Although drama is a recreation of human actions and feelings, it reaches the hearts of people, where real changes manifest; hence, it can bring about the expected social change. However, the prime audience of the younger generation wanted instant thrills and spills, and theatre lost its patrons; it basically became an amateur activity nowadays. Despite this, what made people want to go into the theatre?

The play “Nathuram Godse, the Killer of Mahatma” was another intense, moving, and inspiring play at Kalakshetra recently. It was heartening to see so many theatre lovers at the auditorium for that historical piece. Dramas actually enlighten people by bringing them from their dark world towards the light. It’s such another approach from Pahi production, where tales of violence from the dreadful time faced by the two dominions—India and Pakistan—are narrated with facts.

At the stroke of midnight, freedom was attained at the price of the country being divided into two nations. India’s partition in 1947 continues to evoke strong emotions. It resulted in bloodshed and collective trauma, deepening the faith divide on either side of the border. Defining the new national border by dividing the provinces of Bengal in the east and Punjab in the west became difficult. That was the starting point for utter chaos. Violence erupted as faith-based communities turned against one another. Hindus and Muslims, who had been living together for centuries, were suddenly torn apart. The atrocities were indeed terrible, and the desire for wealth was another major trigger for the violence. People were forced to cross borders.

The partition is regarded as one of the largest and most violent political migrations. There had been a mass exodus where millions of people were either displaced from their ancestral homes and families or murdered in communal riots that history has witnessed. People tried to seek refuge on the other side of the border to escape the wave of brutal violence and savagery. Sikh women in Pakistan’s Punjab province committed suicide inside the Gurudwara in order to protect their honour. The crowded train in Layallpur, present-day Faisalabad, was butchered. Victims of partition riots faced inhuman treatment in the national capital. The absurdity and heartbreak of the overnight creation of new borders were reflected in bad shape.

The painful partition of India’s independence perhaps serves as a reminder of the very high cost of freedom. The playwright focused on some of the hidden stories of India’s independence. The killer of Mahatma accused Bapuji of having betrayed India by being pro-Jinnah and soft on Pakistan and even blaming him for the bloodshed that marked partition. Upstage, one of the victims (the old Muslim) of the partition riots came out on top, playing challenging roles. Gandihiji was projected with a bold character at centre stage, while Nathuram Godse took pride in stating his political convictions. His opposition to the Gandhian ideas of pacifism and nonviolence had finally led him to kill Mahatma.

Hearing the three shots fired at close range, the house was watching a burst of heart-stopping action at the end. However, critics are there to judge the merits of the artistic work that was especially done professionally by the group of artists from Mangaldaidge the merits of the artistic work that was especially done professionally by the group of artists from Mangaldai. The British used religion as a way of dividing people into categories. Later, it became a factor in politics that seemed to fail to grab attention through the play. The stage was tactfully divided up into sections based on the performers’ perspective towards the audience. But along with the joy of freedom from colonial rule, partition was a painful episode in the history of both countries. The story of the partition has been told and retold time and again in films and books, and certainly the play took a bold step to revisit the violent legacy of the Indian partition.