US expert's startling view on why West overlooks India's achievements

The West's obsession with India's ''glorious past'' has bulldozed the sub-continent's present achievements into oblivion.

Making this startling observation is not an Indian leftist. But an American expert who is currently in India to continue his research on the famous Ramnagar Ram Lila.

If India's modern theatre was studied as carefully as the traditional forms, the country's contribution to world theatre would have been ''more strikingly visible'', says Professor Richard Schechner of the New York University, at a lecture at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi recently.

Many Western scholars perceive only the classical and folk genres as ''really Indian'', while leaving out the modern ones as ''tainted'', or ''impure'', he says.

When the Europeans first became interested in Indian culture, they ''found an India of Vedas, Upanishads, epics, dramas of Kalidasa, Bhasa.... And lots of ruins,'' points out the expert adding that the quest for old India's remnants still reigns supreme.

Observing that American scholars desire to work on material that is not ''tainted'' by Western or globalising influences, he says there are no ''untouched'' or ''pure'' rituals or performances in India or anywhere else.

From the days of Mohenjodaro and Harappa, the Indian culture was continuously infiltrated, invaded and affected by what was coming from outside. ''But every external influence was 'domesticated' -- fused with what was already here,'' argues Professor Schechner.

The British brought modern theatre to the subcontinent as entertainment for the Europeans and as something Indians might emulate as part of the colonising process. But the practices introduced by the colonisers later became localised -- no longer signalling adherence to colonial values. They rather began to reflect the opposite: resistance to outside influence, the assertion of national desires and the expression of indigenous arts, he observes.

Therefore, it is wrong to conclude that Indian modern theatre is ''Western''. The subjects of the drama are Indian. And a number of influential Indian modern theatre people have drawn in traditional Indian genres fusing them with what they got from the West, he says.

In this context, he gives the example of the Ram Katha, Ram Kahani presented by the Calcutta thespian, Shyamanand Jalan, in 1995. The Jalan approach was post-modern combining the Ramayana narrative with film music, Kathak, Rap, fashion shows and Parsi theatre melodrama.

Modern theatre is as Indian as the ancient Sanskrit theatre of Kerala Kodiyettam, he says adding the Indian rasa theory informs the modern as well as the traditional theatre.

Stating that even the terms ''Western'' and ''Indian'' are very slippery, the professor says an imported practice may in course of a generation or two be part of the place it is brought to.

The categorisation of the art forms into classical, folk, traditional, popular, tribal and modern also turns out to be overlapping and contradictory. ''Why are Odissi, Kathak and Bharat Natyam 'classical' and Theyyam 'folk'? What is the difference between 'tribal' and 'folk' theatre?'' he raises some very relevant questions.

He also notes that there have been no attempts by American scholarship to study movements, writers and directors of specific Indian theatres.

For example, there are no books or sizable essays by US experts on Mohan Rakesh, Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, Utpal Dutt, Shombhu Mitra, K N Pannicker, Girish Karnad, B M Shah, Mahesh Elkunchwar, B V Karanth, Satyadev Dubey, Jalan, Mohan Agashe, Anuradha Kapur and Anamika Haksar, he points out.

Describing the prejudice against modern theatre ''nettlesome'', he says traditional theatre has become a ''cultural preserve'' largely because of official interest and patronage. This interest and patronage ranges from outright subsidy to aid scholars to touring opportunities that hook up traditional performers to a global network, he adds.

UNI