‘Sense of fear I see everywhere…': Marathi playwright Satish Alekar

Indian Express

6 days ago

Eminent Marathi playwright and actor Satish Alekar spoke about his work, the Emergency, fundamentalism, tolerance, and the language row, among other things, in an interaction with The Indian Express. Progressive and forthright, Satish Alekar, whose influence spans generations, has enriched the Marathi – and Indian – stage with powerful and political plays, including Mickey Aani Memsaheb (1973), Mahanirvan (1974), Mahapoor (1975), Begum Barve (1979), and Atireki (1990).
Much of Alekar's appeal lies in his wit and the social issues he raises in his plays, such as inequity, injustice and fundamentalism. Pune-based Alekar is a recipient of the Padma Shri and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for theatre (Marathi playwriting). He has taught at BJ Medical College and served as the director of the Lalit Kala Kendra.
Excerpts from the interaction:
Dipanita Nath: You are a biochemist by training. How did you come into theatre and playwriting?
Satish Alekar: I became a playwright by fluke. I had lost my admission to a medical college because, during that time, I was campaigning for the Congress party. My maternal uncle V N Gadgil was given a Lok Sabha ticket for Pune and was defeated by Samajwadi leader S M Joshi by just 12,000 votes. I didn't realise while campaigning that the examination was just around the corner. I was left out to do a BSc and all my friends went and joined IIT and various medical colleges. During that time, in any middle-class Brahmin family, if you missed admission to either an engineering or a medical college, it was a crime. I was very dejected. At this time, Bhalchandra Vaman Kelkar somehow spotted me and asked me to play a role in a play he was staging. This was 1967. I did the main role and found that theatre worked like therapy for me. I gradually started realising myself from within through theatre.
Anuradha Mascarenhas: Which was the very first play you saw and the first one you wrote?
Satish Alekar: The very first play I saw was when we were in the eighth standard. Due to the Panshet dam disaster, the school had organised a professional theatre festival to support the flood-affected people. I saw the best commercial theatre that was happening over 10 consecutive days from the wings. As asked by my teacher, I used to offer tea or coffee to the artists who were coming by buses to Ramanbaug, which used to have a very big ground during that time. ⁠I watched all the plays from the wings and not from audience. So I got a sense that theatre is made up, not real. This element was reflected later in my playwriting.
All my short plays were written while I was in Fergusson College and they were published in the very prestigious magazine Satya Katha. I was very young during that time. That's why many of my plays have completed 50 years while I am alive.
Manoj More: What was your experience of the Emergency, which was also 50 years ago?
Satish Alekar: I saw the Emergency in force because we were at BJ Medical College and all the political prisoners were brought to Sassoon Hospital for checking. And that was the only time they used to get to meet their relatives. The doctor and all the people were siding with the political prisoners, not against them. We used to bring the relatives to the prisoners, sometimes the latter gave us tiffin to give to the political prisoners. It so happened that at this time, while I was helping the political prisoners, my maternal uncle was a minister in the Central Government.
In fact, my marriage took place during the Emergency and one person who signed at the court as witness was my maternal uncle V N Gadgil and the other was S M Joshi. They knew each other. We stayed in Shaniwar Peth, which had an accommodative point of view. Their atmosphere was the best for the development of a liberal democracy.
All our teachers belonged to the RSS but we never went to an RSS party. My cousin went to the RSS. My father belonged to the Samajwadi Party. My father had been in jail for four years for the freedom movement. All the differences were present, but there was not the kind of animosity you see now.
Manoj More: When did society begin to change?
Satish Alekar: I think everything changed after 2014. Gradually, the parameters of liberal democracy began to shrink day by day. You can see what's happening today, and it has been reflected in my latest play, Thakishi Samvad. As artists, we suffered more after the Emergency, when Ghashiram Kotwal and Sakharam Binder became targets. We couldn't move out of the house. Many people were asked to leave the theatre because 'you are a Brahmin and you are working under a Muslim director'.
Because of the controversy surrounding Ghashiram Kotwal, we were forced to leave the group Progressive Dramatics Association (PDA) after the first 19 shows. We established our own group, Theatre Academy, and, after a gap of one year, we resumed the play and no one contested it.
For Ghashiram Kotwal, we received an invitation from the Berlin International Film Festival in 1980 and a second controversy started [over claims'] that 'You are doing theatre here which is alright, but you don't wash this linen outside the country. It is a bad history of your projecting, your play is a character assassination of a great historian Nana Fadnavis.'
Vijay Tendulkar, the playwright, and a few others went to court. The compromise the court gave us was that, before every performance outside India, we were to read out the court order publicly that this was not a reflection of real history. This was an artist's point of view. People used to laugh at that. We had to get the court order translated into Dutch because we are performing in Amsterdam. We had to translate it into German because we are performing in Germany. We had to translate it in French. We had 25 shows in West Europe and in London. In London, we had 12 houseful shows of Ghashiram Kotwal.
From 2014 onwards, the situation is not all that conducive. There is a sense of fear I see everywhere. This is fear about whether I should express myself fully, whether someone will be watching me and hit me, not physically but by not giving me any kind of opportunity.
Sushant Kulkarni: As far as reaching more people is concerned, does a politically convenient stand reach more people?
Satish Alekar: Yes, but we don't know what is really in their mind. An example is the current hidden pro-Hindu elements in the middle class. It was there right from the beginning in my childhood. On October 13, 1964, I was in school when Gopal Godse, the brother of Mahatma Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse, was released from prison. It so happened that people who supported his ideology decided to honour Gopal Godse. But, how to do this? It would become a very volatile situation and they would get arrested. The solution was to have 100 Satyanarayan Mahapujas at the homes of the supporters and distribute the prasad. In Shaniwar Peth, Deccan Gymkhana and other localities of the city, Satyanarayan pujas were conducted in homes. Who will object? If you asked them, 'Are you honouring Gopal Godse?', the answer would be no. A hundred households conducted private pujas. The supporters had planned to bring the prasad to Udyan Mangal Karyalaya in Sadashiv Peth for distribution, an event that would be attended by Godse himself. That story leaked in Kesari the next day. That's how the people came to know that such a thing happened.
So, religious divisions have been an entrenched part of Indian society. Today, fundamentalism has come to the forefront as it has received some kind of confidence. I think that the BJP's own reinterpretation of their own party is responsible for these kinds of social divisions. This party was very different under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Pramod Mahajan was very fond of theatre and watched our plays. They think that this will be successful and long lasting and praised all over the world. I don't know whether it is true or if we will fall on our faces.
Dipanita Nath: We have lost Ratan Thiyam, a great director.
Satish Alekar: It was thanks only to regimes like Indira Gandhi's, because of her policies in culture, that his plays could come. She formulated a policy in such a way that every ministry had to spend 20 per cent of their budget on the seven sisters. I knew Ratan very closely because he used to come here off and on. Our student visited him and conducted a 15-day workshop in Imphal. Once I asked him, 'Why are you so restless? Why do you make plays only on war and myth?'
He said, 'if you want to know how we live in Manipur, come and visit us. You come out on the street and you see the traffic police; in Manipur, we never see police, we see the Army. We see the Indian Army behaving aggressively. Suppose my actor is to leave his place and come to the rehearsal, he has to cross three barriers and show that he is an Indian. Imagine, you have to show your identity three times to prove that you are the real person. If that kind of a situation exists, what kind of a subject will one make plays on.'
He gave a new dimension to the theatre space, and created the theatre space spectacularly using the fabrics and the mask, traditional drums and language. He was a profound literary figure as well. He was a fine designer, musician, and painter. His paintings used to sell. He was a wonderful designer, actor, writer and poet. The other thing is he was a Meitei but he involved Kuki performers as well. When one creative person dies, you will find it's very difficult for any other person to fill up the void.
Sunanda Mehta: Last year we had an incident at the Savitribai Phule Pune University in which a play, Ramleela, was disrupted. What is your take on all that happened?
Satish Alekar: Now, everything has become quiet. It was not a play but a rehearsal that was taking place. It was a text-to-performance in which the students were supposed to perform some scene and analyse it. It was not a complete play. You can't demand some kind of authentic value to that particular piece because it was a play in the making, a kind of a trivial theatre exercise. For a theatre exercise, we need one or two audience numbers. That's why they had invited an audience. The audience came in large numbers and we found that some mischievous element was there in the audience. The whole thing was blown out of proportion for no reason. Theatre is vulnerable; performing art is very vulnerable. You can destroy it any time. The university should have supported [the performers]. It reflects the times where there is no tolerance, that's for sure.
Ajay Jadhav: Would you like to comment on the language row in schools?
Satish Alekar: We started in the Marathi language. Hindi was introduced to us in the sixth standard and English from the eighth standard. Gradually, they brought English a little forward to the fifth standard, but from the first to the fourth standard, there was only one language. People have introduced English from the first standard, which is a bad decision and I don't know how it can be reversed now. Why do we need politics over the issue of a third language?
Partha Sarathi Biswas: What kind of media do you consume these days?
Satish Alekar: There is a lot of media to be consumed. One has to become very choosy. I listen very carefully to the video channel of Pravin Sawhney of Force magazine. The way in which he described wars and so on makes me feel that we don't know which war is the real one and which is a virtual war.