Latest news with #SShakthidharan
ABC News
a day ago
- General
- ABC News
The Indian ecological disaster that inspired new Australian play, The Wrong Gods
Travel deep into the dense forest and rolling hills of central India and you will find the ancient town of Amarkantak — the birthplace of the great Narmada river. The river runs west, all the way to the Arabian Sea. By the water's edge, eagles and hornbills flit across the immense jungle canopy comprising countless tree species that are found nowhere else on the subcontinent. The river's vast banks are a refuge for wildlife as grand and diverse as tigers, bears and wolves. It's also a home for humans, and a holy place. Mentioned in classic texts like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, it's not hard to imagine Hindu gods taking a stroll along its rapids. But, after centuries of being home to not just intricate ecosystems but countless villages and farmers, the Narmada River now represents human-made ecological disaster and powerful protest. The iconic grassroots movement that sprung up around the river has rippled far and wide — including here to Australia, where a new work by award-winning playwright S. Shakthidharan uses it as inspiration. Called The Wrong Gods, the play's central question is: what stops us from acting in the best interest of nature? The Narmada Valley Project, or the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is one of the world's biggest hydropower infrastructure projects — including 30 major, 135 medium and 3,000 small dams. Proposed in the 60s, the national building goal was noble: capture the river's huge flow to irrigate farmland and provide drinking water and power for three Indian states. Instead, it has been described as India's "greatest planned environmental disaster". While no environmental impact research was done prior to its construction, the dam has led to widespread deforestation, loss of habitat and loss of wildlife, both aquatic and mammal. Almost immediately, Indigenous Indian villagers (Adivasis) were displaced by the rising river banks or, as famed writer Arundhati Roy put it, "chased off their ancestral lands as though they were intruders". The total count of the farmers, farm workers and fisherfolk who would be made homeless is somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 and encompasses hundreds of villages. Most of these people have been forced to move to slums surrounding major cities. Ten years ago, Australian playwright S. Shakthidharan visited one such farming family, who were part of the resistance to the dam project, and it was there the seed for his new play was planted. "I'll never forget those few nights," he tells ABC Arts. "It takes a long time to get there, it's very remote, and so we hadn't eaten much for a very long time. And when we got there, they killed a chicken for us. "I was vegetarian at the time, which I didn't tell them, and I helped them clean and prepare the chicken. We spent the whole night doing that, cooking and eating it. And then I slept next to the farmer on a rattan bed, over the chickens." According to Nadini K Oza, a former activist and current archivist of the movement, it was a true grassroots operation. "For more than half a century, the people of the Narmada Valley who were affected by the project have been conducting small and big struggles against the SSP," she says. "In the mid-1980s and late 1980s, many of these groups, organisations and struggles came together and ultimately evolved into the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA)." The NBA was hugely successful with its protests. It forced the World Bank to withdraw its $US450 million loan from the dam project and later was able to halt construction for several years through the Supreme Court. The movement fought for and won "better rehabilitation and resettlement of the people" displaced from their villages too. Despite these successes, dam construction has continued and is due for completion in 2025 — making the conservation and Indigenous-rights debates a continuing part of India's political landscape. It may seem half a world away but, for S. Shakthidharan, the story of the Narmada River has much to offer us in Australia today. "I was really grappling with the reasons that we aren't acting on climate change," he says. "I think our biggest issue is actually a cultural one, which is that we are locked into systems of consumption that we don't know how to get out of, and we're locked to it, to a way of relating to the natural worlds that we don't know how to get out of. "How do we acknowledge the incredible things progress has given us, and still find a way forward to cultural change, to bend the power of progress in a different way?" That's when he came up with the idea for The Wrong Gods — reflecting that perhaps the most successful religion of all time was that of progress. "We pray to it and believe in it regardless of political beliefs about it. It's a religion that, even if you're against it, you're still a part of." Finally, the playwright realised he had already visited the perfect setting for all this — the Narmada Valley. "I tried to write a plan which kind of took inspiration from that setting and that struggle, but could turn it into a parable for all of us." Shakthidharan has also intentionally incorporated one of the most striking aspects of the anti-dam movement — the prominent role of women. Women have led many direct actions, including long fasts and have faced the brunt of state retaliation including police beatings and jail. The Wrong Gods centres on Nirmala, a very traditional village woman, and her daughter Isha, who has dreams of leaving their remote valley to study and become a scientist. "The characters ended up becoming all women in the play, and the relationship between individual liberation and collective liberation felt so potent in that context," Shakthidharan says. He soon realised the benefits of co-directing with a woman — Hannah Goodwin, the resident director of Belvoir. "I realised that it would be great to use this opportunity to build a team where as many women are at the forefront as possible: so the set was built by women, we have women costume designers, stage managers and actors. "The room and the process has been different for that and I'm so proud of that." The Wrong Gods is currently showing at Arts Centre Melbourne until June 12.
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Wrong Gods review – absorbing drama tackles dark chapter in India's history
H aving made his name with the hugely successful Counting and Cracking – an epic three-hour work spanning multiple generations and featuring a massive set, 16 performers and many more characters – the Sydney playwright S Shakthidharan has downsized in his latest play. The Wrong Gods covers just seven years over 100 minutes, with four actors on an almost bare stage. But do not be deceived: this is an ambitious work with big ideas on its mind. It tilts at nothing less than the history of capitalism and impacts of modernity. Our setting is riverside in a valley in India, surrounded by a bountiful forest – a kind of prelapsarian paradise. Here we meet Nirmala (Nadie Kammallaweera, the star of Counting and Cracking and its sequel, The Jungle and the Sea), a farmer and the head of her village's council, and her precocious teen daughter, Isha (Radhika Mudaliyar, another Counting and Cracking alum), an aspiring scientist. Nirmala, whose ancestral roots in the valley stretch generations, believes in the old, pre-Hinduism gods – and in particular the goddess: the river. Isha does too, though her voracious mind is already questioning these belief systems and questing for greater truths. Isha longs to escape back to school in the city. Nirmala, newly abandoned by her husband, needs her daughter home to help work their patch of land. The two quarrel over their competing values and visions of the world, as mothers and daughters often do. A greater struggle is afoot: Nirmala is anxiously awaiting the arrival of 'big fat American' developers who have greedy eyes on the village, and prays to the goddess to send them packing. Isha prays to the goddess to let her go with them, back to her teacher and educational champion, Miss Devi (Manali Datar). And then, as if teleported from another dimension, Lakshmi (Vaishnavi Suryaprakash) arrives: a middle-class smooth-talker with an offer too good to refuse – and a magic packet of seeds that promises high yields with low labour. Nirmala can prosper; Isha can go to school. Worshipping different gods: Nirmala (Nadie Kammallaweera), Isha (Radhika Mudaliyar) and Lakshmi (Vaishnavi Suryaprakash). Photograph: Brett Boardman Photography/Belvoir If this smacks of fairytale or myth, it's by design and clearly telegraphed by the play's elemental set (its stone surfaces and moss-tipped concentric circles evoking an ancient amphitheatre) and by the dialogue: Isha, it is explained, is the goddess of destruction; Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth. But there may be other clues here too: in Sanskrit, Isha means strength, guardian or protector; Nirmala means virtuous. The Wrong Gods is doing double duty, working as a fable of capitalism and modernity, and as a primer on a specific chapter of Indian history: the government-sponsored Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, and its devastating impacts. Nirmala's village is a microcosm of a devilish pact in which an estimated 50 million farmers and Indigenous people were displaced by a network of dams that promised water for the cities, at the expense of natural environments and civilisations thousands of years in the making. At the same time, the Indian government and foreign companies induced farmers to abandon old crops and methods for new high-yield varieties of wheat and corn, and synthetic fertilisers. This also came at a cost, sending millions of farmers into crushing debt cycles that spawned suicide epidemics, and upended delicate ecosystems with far-reaching consequences. The Wrong Gods was inspired by one of the centres of this modern tragedy: the Narmada Valley, site of the Sardar Sarovar dam network – dubbed 'India's greatest planned environmental disaster'. It was also the birthplace of one of India's most successful civil resistance movements: Narmada Bachao Andolan. Isha, Nirmala and Lakshmi look on as Devi (Manali Datar) takes the floor. Photograph: Brett Boardman Photography/Belvoir Shakthidharan spent time in the valley more than a decade ago, and The Wrong Gods offers an imagined origin story for Narmada Bachao Andolan, which was substantially led by women. Perhaps in tribute to this, not only the cast and characters but almost the entire creative team of this production, which Shakthidharan co-directs with Belvoir resident Hannah Goodwin, are women. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion The Australian Ballet performs Manon – in pictures Like many contemporary plays of ideas, The Wrong Gods suffers occasionally from speechifying and on-the-nose lines, with scenes interrupted as characters spout exposition. The extent to which audiences tolerate this may depend on how much they know of the real-world issues. The play is generally successful, however, in bringing a massive, intractable problem down to the human scale, showing the emotions and interpersonal dynamics – and primal survival instincts – behind this epic tragedy. The performances are great and special credit goes to Kammallaweera and Mudaliyar, who swiftly and surely bring the mother and daughter to endearing life and make us believe the relationship on to which the play's big ideas are scaffolded. Goodwin and Shakthidharan keep the drama dynamic and engaging, and pare back aesthetics and action so as to not overwhelm the text. The result is an absorbing drama – though fans of Counting and Cracking may wish Shakthidharan lent a little less on neat parable and a little more into the human mess.
