ಮಂಗಳವಾರ, ಫೆಬ್ರವರಿ 18, 2014

Cultural Elites and the Disciplining of Bhavai

Cultural Elites and the Disciplining of Bhavai
V Sebastian


V Sebastian (saby_vaz@yahoo.com) is with the Gujarat Vidya Deep,
B/H Xavier Technical Institute, Vadodara, Gujarat.

Curtusy: Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 15, 2014 vol xlix no 7


Bhavai, an ancient form of Gujarati folk-theatre,
functioned as a counter-voice in a society marked by
caste and class distinctions, by subverting the social
norms of the cultural elite. Gradually, the Gujarati elites
began intervening to discipline and domesticate it for
urban as well as non-urban audiences. Post-
Independence, experimental theatre groups too
attempted this reconstitution through exoticisation and
production of “difference” between the folk and the
elite. This paper explores and interrogates the
assumption that folk-theatre like the Bhavai can be
disciplined and transposed unproblematically to urban
and non-urban audiences. Bhavai as folk-theatre is
located in a set of temporal and spatial prerequisites.
Divested of these conditions Bhavai ceases to be
what it is.


In his book Further Milestones in Gujarati Literature, Diwan
Bahadur Krishnalal Jhaveri (1868-1957), a well-known
writer and public fi gure made some observations about
Bhavai, a form of popular folk-theatre in Gujarat. According
to Jhaveri, who had been chief judge at the Bombay Presidency
Small Causes Court, Bhavai’s distinguishing features
are “gross vulgarity, open indecency, public obscenity, now
and then tempered by some home truths”. He suspects that
Bhavai “probably owes its origin to the sinister side of the
cult of the Devi (Shaktamath) which rejoices in the drinking
of wine, eating of flesh, using of foul language and deriving
pleasure from lewdness”. Jhaveri describes the audience of
the folk-theatre thus: “Coarse wit, and vulgar phrases produced
screams of laughter from their audiences, which were
mixed and generally as illiterate as the actors and who
p atiently underwent the ordeal of sitting out the performance
from early evening to the early morning of the next
day”. He adds: “Bhavais have now entirely gone out of
f ashion and survive only in remote villages, from where
they are also being gradually banished, their place being
supplied by traveling theatrical companies and cinema
shows” (Jhaveri 1924: 181-82).
Jhaveri informs us that a “very laudable attempt” was made
by a well-known social reformer Rao Saheb Mahipatram
Rupram Mehta (1829-91) to reform Bhavai by “eliminating
from it gross obscenities”. Mahipatram collected various Bhavai
plays and published them in a book entitled Bhavai Samgrah
in 1874. As Jhaveri (1924: 182-83) points out, this collection
“contains none of the objectionable features of a Bhavai performance”.
He adds that “shorn of their vulgarities and coarseness,
they present quite an enjoyable picture of the idiosyncrasies
and peculiarities of the different communities as well as
of the incidents they are intended to portray”. Mahipatram
detested traditional Bhavai because it did not measure up to
the norms and standards of Sanskrit theatre and found the
folk-theatre aesthetically wanting. He recast them according
to the reformist ideology and in the language of the educated,
urban middleclass of the 19th century. In that process, Mehta
removed, not only what in his view were “obscene” language
and unacceptable elements in Bhavai but also dislocated this
folk-theatre from its historical and social roots and transformed
it into a “sanitised, frozen, popular form for middle
class consumption” (Joshi 2009: 361). Mahipatram, who felt
the need for preserving Bhavai, wrote this book “to teach their
profession to the youth of this caste” by spending his own
money. But we are informed that “his good intentions bore no
fruit, and the drama did not improve” (Jhaveri 1924: 182-82).

Perhaps this is the fi rst elite “disciplinary” intervention with
a view to reform and to reconstitute Bhavai for an urban audience
in the last decades of the 19th century. What makes these
interventions particularly interesting is the fact that Bhavai
had been in existence for about 500 years or so in Gujarat and
the objections to it began to crystallise only at the tail end of
the 19th century. At the forefront of the fi rst wave of disciplinary
interventions were Gujarati elites of various ideological
persuasions such as reformers, playwrights and intellectuals.
They were followed by another set of interventions in the mid-
20th century. In the post-Independence period, cultural groups
like the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), Sangeet
Natak Akademi (Seminar) and Darpana Academy of Performing
Arts not only sought the reconstitution of Bhavai for the urban
and non-urban audiences but also to mould this Gujarati folktheatre
into their own image. As we shall see, during this period,
there is an attempt to project the folk-theatre as exotic by the
elites and to incorporate these theatrical forms in their own
experimental theatres. Taken together, these disciplinary interventions
involve, at least in part, not only the exoticisation of
folk-theatre but also the production of “difference” in terms of
the folk and the urban. The primary interest of this article is in
discerning the disciplinary acts, namely, the interventions at
various levels that sought to make Bhavai conform to the cultural
and aesthetic norms of the dominant society of Gujarat.
The elite representations of this folk-theatre provide one
particular view; there are also other views about it. Bhavai,
and its performers, the Bhavaiyas come from the non-elite
stratum of Gujarati society. Traditionally Bhavai was performed
by an itinerant low-caste group called the Targala and this
folk-theatre contained carnivalesque elements which mocked
social relations and customs. The originator of this folktheatre,
Asait Thakar, was a social rebel who defi ed the caste
taboos and social restrictions of medieval Gujarati society.
Bhavai in its traditional form exemplifi ed the non- sectarian
and non-hierarchical vision of society and thereby offered an
implicit critique of the highly stratifi ed traditional society in
Gujarat. As Hansen (2004: 104) points out, “Bhavaiyas often
targeted moneylenders, priests, and other fi gures of authority,
bringing a strong fl avour of social critique to their skits”. Traditionally,
there was a special relationship between Bhavai and
the audiences mediated through performers. The Bhavaiyas
made the audience not only laugh and weep but also made
them think and refl ect on the social realities around them
(Desai 2004: 318). If this is true, then Bhavai performances
offer an impressive register of a consciousness, which was
qualitatively different from that of the dominant society, which
sought to keep the status quo.
The disciplinary discourse about Bhavai is not only about
the production of “differences” but also about the role of representation
in such cultural imaginaries about “otherness”.
While constructions of difference in terms of self and the other
can be seen as inevitable, often the representations are used
by those who have power, to discipline, domesticate and control
those who are at the margins. In other words, constructions
of difference

Perhaps this is the fi rst elite “disciplinary” intervention with
a view to reform and to reconstitute Bhavai for an urban audience
in the last decades of the 19th century. What makes these
interventions particularly interesting is the fact that Bhavai
had been in existence for about 500 years or so in Gujarat and
the objections to it began to crystallise only at the tail end of
the 19th century. At the forefront of the fi rst wave of disciplinary
interventions were Gujarati elites of various ideological
persuasions such as reformers, playwrights and intellectuals.
They were followed by another set of interventions in the mid-
20th century. In the post-Independence period, cultural groups
like the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), Sangeet
Natak Akademi (Seminar) and Darpana Academy of Performing
Arts not only sought the reconstitution of Bhavai for the urban
and non-urban audiences but also to mould this Gujarati folktheatre
into their own image. As we shall see, during this period,
there is an attempt to project the folk-theatre as exotic by the
elites and to incorporate these theatrical forms in their own
experimental theatres. Taken together, these disciplinary interventions
involve, at least in part, not only the exoticisation of
folk-theatre but also the production of “difference” in terms of
the folk and the urban. The primary interest of this article is in
discerning the disciplinary acts, namely, the interventions at
various levels that sought to make Bhavai conform to the cultural
and aesthetic norms of the dominant society of Gujarat.
The elite representations of this folk-theatre provide one
particular view; there are also other views about it. Bhavai,
and its performers, the Bhavaiyas come from the non-elite
stratum of Gujarati society. Traditionally Bhavai was performed
by an itinerant low-caste group called the Targala and this
folk-theatre contained carnivalesque elements which mocked
social relations and customs. The originator of this folktheatre,
Asait Thakar, was a social rebel who defi ed the caste
taboos and social restrictions of medieval Gujarati society.
Bhavai in its traditional form exemplifi ed the non- sectarian
and non-hierarchical vision of society and thereby offered an
implicit critique of the highly stratifi ed traditional society in
Gujarat. As Hansen (2004: 104) points out, “Bhavaiyas often
targeted moneylenders, priests, and other fi gures of authority,
bringing a strong fl avour of social critique to their skits”. Traditionally,
there was a special relationship between Bhavai and
the audiences mediated through performers. The Bhavaiyas
made the audience not only laugh and weep but also made
them think and refl ect on the social realities around them
(Desai 2004: 318). If this is true, then Bhavai performances
offer an impressive register of a consciousness, which was
qualitatively different from that of the dominant society, which
sought to keep the status quo.
The disciplinary discourse about Bhavai is not only about
the production of “differences” but also about the role of representation
in such cultural imaginaries about “otherness”.
While constructions of difference in terms of self and the other
can be seen as inevitable, often the representations are used
by those who have power, to discipline, domesticate and control
those who are at the margins. In other words, constructions
of difference can often entail an ideological template and these
both an exploration as well as an interrogation of the assumption
that folk-theatre like Bhavai can be disciplined through
representations and transposed unproblematically to urban
and non-urban audiences. While delineating these disciplinary
interventions, the focus is on two forms of representations
related to Bhavai. The fi rst of these deals with representations
as “descriptions” and portrayals of Bhavai and its audiences.
These representations, which seek to contain and discipline
Bhavai, portray it as the cultural other. As we shall see, in some
of them even the audiences of urban folk-theatre are represented
as exotic. Here, exotic is understood as cultural otherness
which needs to be contained and disciplined. It must be
noted that the exotic is not an inherent quality to be found “in”
certain people, objects and places. Rather, exoticism entails a
peculiar modality of aesthetic perception “which renders people,
objects and places strange even as it domesticates them,
surrender to its immanent mystery” (Huggan 2001: 13). The
second form focuses on representation as “speaking for” the
folk-theatre. These representations, which want to save Bhavai
from extinction, decontextualise it for urban and non-urban
audiences. Both forms of representation contain elements of
disciplinary intent, exoticisation and domestication of Bhavai
and its non-urban audiences.

This article consists of fi ve sections. The fi rst briefl y locates
Bhavai in its social and cultural contexts. The focus of the second
section is the way folk traditions like Bhavai came to be
seen within the elite/folk binary oppositions. The third section
explores the efforts of experimental theatres, to transform
Bhavai into their own image. The fourth looks at Darpana
Academy’s efforts to reconstitute Bhavai for the Rathva adivasis
of south Gujarat. Here, the reconstituted Bhavai becomes
the vehicle to enhance medical knowledge of the adivasis, who
are seen as immersed in superstition and tradition and lacking
in progress and modernity. Against this background, the fi fth
section looks at some of the ambiguities and ambivalences
involved in the elite disciplinary interventions and the appropriation
of Bhavai by the urban folk-theatre.

1 Sociocultural Contexts

Traditionally, Bhavaiyas are believed to be the descendants of
Asait Thakar of Unjha in north Gujarat who lived in the 14th
century. According to popular legend, he was an Audichhya
brahman who served as the family priest of Hemal Patel, the
chief of Unjha. One day Hemal’s daughter Ganga was abducted
by Jahan Roz, a Khilji chief. Hemal asked Asait to bring back
his daughter, using his artistic skills. Asait entertained the
Muslim chief with songs and succeeded in pleasing him. He
then claimed that Ganga was his daughter and pleaded with
the chief to release her. The Muslim chieftain suspected Asait’s
claim but agreed to release Ganga if he dined with her from
the same plate. To the surprise of the chieftain, Asait dined
with Ganga, a non-brahmin and secured her release. When
Asait returned to Unjha, he was excommunicated from the
brahmin community for breaking the caste rules. He accepted
his fate and began to earn a living by singing and dancing,
something that was traditionally practised by outcastes. Asait
formed Gujarat’s fi rst folk-theatre with his sons and other
artists and eventually this group became a caste. They continue
to preserve the hereditary right to perform Bhavai in
Gujarat (Patel 2002: 89; Varadpande 1992: 173). The Bhavaiyas
are known variously as Targalas, Nayaks and Bhojaks and are
mostly found in north and central Gujarat. According to the
1901 Gazetteer of Bombay Presidency the population of
Bhavaiyas was 12,889 (Kirparam 1988: 222).
As a communicative event, the Bhavai performance is
loca ted, enacted and rendered meaningful within a socially and
culturally defi ned context. Traditionally, this folk-theatre functioned
within the framework of the patronage system and there
were two major caste groups which supported Bhavai. The
main patrons of the Bhavaiyas were the Kanbis who at a later
stage came to be known as Patidars and eventually Patels. The
second group which provided patronage for the Bhavaiyas was
the Kolis and according to tradition, it was this low ranking
caste-group which sheltered Asait and his family when they
were excommunicated from the brahmin community (Jhala
2009: 69-71). Both these groups shared a special relationship
with the Bhavaiyas. As the 1901 gazetteer puts it, for “the Kolis
and Kanbis it is a point of honour to support a company of
Targalas” (Kirparam 1988: 223). According to the caste-based
census conducted in 1931, the Kolis constituted 24.22% and the
Patidars formed 12.16% of the total population of Gujarat (Shah
1975: 9). Sometimes the Targalas are invited to a particular
village or they go to those villages where they have the “right”
to perform without invitation (Patel 2002; Banham 2000: 103).
The Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency noted in 1901 that
“when a company of Bhavaiyas visit a village the patel and other
leading men raise a subscription... The Targalas stay two or three
days in one village, are fed by the villagers, and before leaving
generally collect from Rs 20 to Rs 50” (Kirparam 1988: 223).
Bhavai is made up of a string of sub-plays called vesha, each
of which focuses on a story. Usually, several veshas are
performed in a single night of Bhavai and there is no structural
connection between one vesha and the next. The number of
veshas in a Bhavai performance can be anything between six
and 15, depending on the length of each one. One of the wellknown
veshas is that of kajodu (mismatch) which depicts
hilariously a man who marries a girl half his age. During the
Bhavai performance various veshas are coordinated by the
nayaka or the stage manager. Amba and Bahucharaji are the
patron goddesses of Bhavai performers and it was performed
during religious festivals related to them. It also has secular
elements which may refl ect social relationships or social issues.
Usually, the itinerant Bhavaiyas go from village to village during
the harvest season. When they start the performance, it is
customary to take an oath of celibacy in front of a goddess or
devi. Troupe members are expected to remain celibate for six
months during the performance time (Nayak 2000: 46).
Bhavai is usually staged in the village square or in front of a
temple or in a temple courtyard. The stage is simple in its
composition with an area marked off by bamboo poles and an
ordinary cloth is hung as the backdrop curtain. There is no
the area behind the curtain serves as the “green room”. Usually
there will be a group of singers who use instruments such as
drums, cymbals, and the bhungal or trumpet (Jhala 2009: 71).
The stage manager draws a large circle with a sword and the
name of the goddess is invoked to make the ring sacred. After
this, only performers are allowed inside the circle. To light up
the area several torches are used (Osnes 2001: 39). In the
evening the Bhavaiyas announce their entry into the village
with the playing of the bhungal. Usually, the performance
opens with Ganesha on the stage and is followed by acrobats
and jugglers. As a rule women never formed a part of the
Bhavai theatre troupe and female parts are played by men who
don the dress of women. Traditionally, the audience too
consisted only of males; women did not attend the show.

2 Production of Difference and Otherness
Till the commercial theatre appeared in the mid-19th century,
Bhavai used to be the main source of entertainment for the
general public in Gujarat (Bhakandwala 2005: 1071). Folktheatre
such as traditional Bhavai had been often transgressive
not only in terms of dealing with “prohibited” content, but
also by fl outing traditional aesthetic forms, and by including
what seemed unrefi ned or objectionable to high-brow culture.
As a transgressive theatre form, its purpose had been precisely
to pierce the protective cocoon of traditions and customs but
within a specifi c cultural context. The discourse about Bhavai
as exotic – the cultural other – seems to have started towards the
end of the 19th century. The exotic often functions as a symbolic
system, domesticating the foreign, the culturally different so
that it is made predictable and comprehensible (Huggen 2001:
13-14). A combination of factors contributed to the projection of
folk forms as exotic or as the cultural other and I shall briefl y
focus on two such elements here, namely, the perceived distinction
between the folk and the elite in Gujarat, and the emergence
of new religious sensibilities and moral perceptions.
Folk forms came to the forefront in the 18th and 19th centuries
with western scholarship which worked within the framework
of romanticism. Herder was infl uential in popularising
the category of folk in European thought and establishing folk
traditions as worthy objects of investigation. The study of folklore
grew signifi cantly in various European countries in the
19th century. Soon a combination of factors such as Darwin’s
evolutionary theory, anthropological concerns and the interest
in the study of old cultures made folklore a highly popular subject
(Dorson 1977: 1). It began to be used as an umbrella term
to indicate the stories, customs, beliefs, sayings, music and
crafts practised mainly by peasants. These shades of meaning
eventually crystallised into a generic sense which indicated
rural populations and socially subordinate groups. Ethnologists
of the 19th century began to incorporate the term folk as
indicating some form of “primitive” characteristics. For ins tance,
Robert Redfi eld, who was instrumental in popularising the
notion of folk culture, described it as highly traditional and
unsophisticated. For him, folk culture represented peasant
groups within a larger society (Winthrop 1991: 124). The term
folk is “used broadly to include certain historically specifi c
social strata, located in material and social relations, whose
view of the world and life, because of their shared material
existence, is in opposition to that of the governing strata”
(Joshi 2009: 359). The folk as a taxonomy of a particular form
of identity gradually also acquired the connotations of being
“exotic”. It is important to take note of the two broad streams
of approaches to western folklore. The fi rst stream, represented
by Herder, not only empathised, but also romanticised
folklore. The second group, infl uenced by Enlightenment
rationalism, looked upon the folk traditions as primitive,
superstitious and premodern.

Some of these conceptions of the folk, especially the Enlightenment
variety, not only began to percolate into elite Gujarati
discourses at the tail-end of the 19th century but also became
instrumental in creating the middle-class Gujarati identity.
New aesthetic, literary and racial sensibilities, which began to
percolate into the middle-class consciousness in the mid-19th
century, put a wedge between the folk/elite binary. According
to Munshi (1935: 251-71), the dominant feature of the period
was the revival of Aryan culture and Sanskrit. During this time
Gujarati literature entered a new phase characterised by heavy
borrowing from Sanskrit. Folk forms were excluded from the
new high art during this phase of Sanskrit and Aryan cultural
regeneration by the upper castes. These cultural changes of
mid-19th century Gujarat led to a further separation of highbrow
and low-brow cultures (Dwyer 2001: 115). For Jhaveri
(1993: 355-56), folk traditions represented “the beliefs and customs,
stories and songs, art and ritual of early and uncultured
people”. We also fi nd construction of binary folk/elite in the
writings of Gandhi. In his Foreword to Munshi’s Gujarat and
Its Literature, Gandhi wrote: “Shri Munshi’s estimate of our
literary achievement appears to me to be very faithful. The
survey naturally confi nes itself to the language understood
and spoken by the middle class...” He further added: “Of the
language of the people we know next to nothing. We hardly
understand their speech. The gulf between them and us the
middle class is so great that we do not know them and they
know still less of what we think and speak” (Gandhi 1935: v).
According to Gandhi, such a gulf exists with regard to songs as
well. He makes a distinction between songs of the middle class
and the “songs of folk”. Gandhi wrote: “The middle classes of
the provinces to which the songs belong are untouched by
them, even as we of Gujarat are untouched by the songs of folk,
i e, the language of the masses of Gujarat” (Gandhi 1935: v). The
binary opposition between elite/folk comes out clearly in
Gandhi’s and Jhaveri’s perception of the Gujarati language and
culture. The centre is occupied by the middle-class elite (“we”)
and the peripheral regions, by the folk (“they”).
In the religious domain, reform movements like the Swaminarayan
sect not only contributed a new perception of morality
but also popularised the process of Sanskritisation and social
mobility of former peasant groups like the kanbis (Hardiman
1988). The founder of this sect, Sahajanand (1781-1830),
rejected many of the rituals associated with the spirits and
divinities of regional traditions in Gujarat and emphasized

18-19). It must be noted that Bhavai was disparaged partly due
to the 19th century elite puritanism which sought to sanitise
all obscene elements from this folk-theatre (Dharwadker 2005:
324). Though traditionally the Bhavai performance was a profession
for the Targalas, in the 19th century it began to acquire
a predominantly religious ritual character (Joshi 2009: 272).
This change has much to do with reform programmes, which
sought to purify Hinduism by purging the “unholy” features
from it. The chief patroness or goddess of the Bhavai performers
is Bahuchara Mata and this particular folk-theatre had a
long association with the temples dedicated to this goddess.
Goddess Bahuchara is considered “unclean” in the sense that
unlike the clean gods who are offered fruits and fl owers, she is
offered chicken and liquor. For the upper castes, her followers
were culturally and politically subversive. She exemplifi ed the
female principle or shakti worship which was widely practised
in Gujarat. Gradually this form of shakti worship became ideologically
suspect in Gujarat because of its associations with
sexuality and non-vegetarian practices. As Samira Sheikh points
out, these aspects were “particularly problematic at a time
when reconstituted Vaishnavism, Jainism and vegetarian
ethos were becoming increasingly dominant in Gujarat”. The
chief Bahuchara Mata shrine is located in north Gujarat which
was the site for theatrical performances considered vulgar and
obscene by the city elites. In the 1930s reformers like Rammohanray
Desai were shocked by the lewdness of Bhavai performed
at this temple and campaigned for the abolition of such
shows in the precincts of the shrine (Sheikh 2010: 84-99).

3 Revivalist Agenda: Bhavai and Experimental Theatre
A new set of interventions and representations of Bhavai began
to refract in the post-Independence period, one marked by cultural
anxieties of a nascent nation trying to distance itself from
colonial legacies. Culture had become one of the key templates
of defi ning the newly-acquired identity of the nation. Dharwadker
(2005: 310) has pointed out that in the revivalist,
nativist and “cultural nationalist perspective, all indigenous
forms that predate colonialism or lie outside the sphere of
European values are valourised as natural, organic and transcendent”.
This new outlook resulted in a turn towards folk
traditions, inaugurating a new era in experimental theatres.
The encounter of modern Indian theatre with folk forms has
been termed as the “return to the roots” and “theatre of roots”.
IPTA, the cultural wing of the Communist Party of India (CPI),
which came into existence in 1942-43, had already set the tone
for folk-theatre revival focusing on people’s participation. This
left-leaning organisation wanted to initiate mass mobilisation
through folk-theatre, and sought the revitalisation of the traditional
stage and folk forms in the struggle against the colonial
government. IPTA had two objectives: The fi rst was to revitalise
traditional rural and folk art forms, and the second, to mirror
contemporary social realities of India through them (Bhatia
1997; Purkayastha 2011: 246). The class conscious Indian elites
had differentiated themselves from the “folk”, who in their taxonomy
were mainly the peasantry. Almost as a reaction to this
elite prejudice, during the freedom struggle the IPTA movement
elevated and viewed the “folk” as the symbol of our “lost heritage”
and the voice of “authentic history” (Bharucha 1996: 79).
The IPTA Bombay branch conducted some innovative experiments
with Bhavai. One of its members, Dina Gandhi, sought
to weave a stronger narrative line into the music and dance
that predominated till then in Gujarat (Dalmia 2006: 163). She
used the Bhavai form and technique in the production of the
Gujarati play, Mena Gurjari in 1953. Her work with Bhavai is
noteworthy for two reasons. First, she used scripted Bhavai,
which was a fundamental change since traditional Bhavai was
oral and not scripted. Second, to the male narrator, ranglo, she
added the female counterpart, rangli, thus paving the way for
the participation of women in Bhavai (Dalmia 2012: 213). It
needs to be noted that the female narrator is an entirely new
addition by the urban-centred theatre. Dina Gandhi’s elder
sister Shanta Gandhi, closely associated with IPTA, also used the
Bhavai form to produce a play Jasma Odan in 1968, which has
been described as a “classic” (Dharwadker 2005: 327). If this
traditional Bhavai vesha had been performed by conventional
Bhavaiyas in a rural setting, would it have received the tag
“classic”? Perhaps what made it “classic” is the perceived
exotic form of Bhavai transposed to an urban setting. In her
“Director’s Note” Shanta Gandhi expressed the diffi culties she
experienced in reinterpreting the traditional folk form and to
render it more rele vant to contemporary audiences. She states
that in such a process “an attempt to signifi cantly alter a traditional
text, without losing sight of the basic ethos of a given
folk form does pose some delicate problems” (quoted by Subramanyam
2002: 24-25). Kailash Pandya, another member of
IPTA, also experimented with Bhavai in his theatre productions
(Awasthi 1984: 38).

Another attempt to incorporate folk traditions into the
mainstream theatrical forms came through the mediation of
the Sangeet Natak Akademi, which was established in 1952 by
the union education ministry. The taxonomy of the folk
received offi cial sanction at the fi rst drama seminar organised
by the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1956 (Bharucha 1996: 78).
The purpose of this seminar, in which nearly 40 experts participated,
was to assess the present and anticipate the future of
Indian drama (Dharwadker 2005: 26). During the seminar,
the only folk genre discussed at length was the Bhavai form of
Gujarat. During an animated discussion Shanta Gandhi, the
main post-Independence promoter of Bhavai, pointed out that
this particular folk-theatre was on the verge of extinction and
something needed to be done urgently (Dharwadker 2005:
315). In the lively debates about Bhavai, the conception of the
“folk” always remained in the background. It was Dina
Gandhi’s talk on Bhavai that provided the focal point in the
discussion. According to Bharucha, the diffi culty with her
position was that “she assumed an empathy with the folk artists
and then proceeded to represent them as if she were speaking
on their behalf. In the process, her own use of these ‘folk
forms’ became confused with their ‘indigenous’ state of being,
which she lamented was in a state of decay, if not total extinction”.
Dina Gandhi’s concern was not merely for the “folk form”
but also for its actors, who were going to be “wiped off due to
neglect, unemployment and actual starvation”. For her, emancipating
the folk artist was a sacred duty and this could materialise
only through the organisation of a research centre and
training school for Bhavai performers (Bharucha 1996: 80-81).
On the basis of the discussion this seminar recommended to
the Sangeet Natak Akademi that “the regeneration of the
Indian theatre can only be possible by revitalising the
traditional folk forms so as to narrow the gulf between the
dramatic forms that have developed during the last hundred
years, and the survivals from the past” (Dharwadker 2005:
42, 315).

The seminar also witnessed dissenting voices, like that of
Ebrahim Alkazi, who strongly disagreed with the view that
artistic experimentations with folk-theatre would bring back
its glorious days. Alkazi said: “We want to educate the Bhavai
artists. But we do not for a moment consider that the nearer
they reach us, the quicker would they discard the arts of their
forefathers.” Responding specifi cally to the apprehensions of
the “so-called crudities” and “vulgarities” entering Bhavai, he
asked: “should we be so prude and puritanical as to evaluate
every art in the light of our own moral code?” Alkazi was of
the opinion that “we should not poke our noses in this affair
because we do not really know what would exactly be good for
this art form and for its practitioners” (Bharucha 1996:81). He
further pointed out that the community of Bhavai artists and
their audiences themselves and the whole structure of the
countryside have undergone signifi cant transformations. As
Dharwadker (2005: 325) rightly observed, most of the aesthetic
debates which took place during the seminar were
largely irrelevant to the vitality of folk culture which depended
on sociocultural and economic conditions.

4 Urban Folk-Theatre and Non-Urban Audiences
Another institution which experimented with Bhavai is the Darpana
Academy of Performing Arts in Ahmedabad, established
in 1949 by Mrinalini Sarabhai and Vikram Sarabhai. The Academy
has focused on performing art forms such as Bharatanatyam,
Kathakali, Kuchipudi, drama, folk dances and folk-theatre
like Bhavai. The drama department of Darpana which was
established in 1959 was headed by Kailash Pandya, who had
been one of the founders of IPTA (Lyton 1995: 141). Damini
Mehta, the fi rst female artist to take part in Bhavai, has been
closely associated with Darpana and has conducted several
workshops on Bhavai. From 1980 onwards, this institution
“has been creating innovative grassroots projects using performances
as entry points in dealing with issues of development
and social change” (Darpana 2008: 36). I would like to focus
here on Darpana’s involvement with Bhavai during 2007-08 in
Chhota Udaipur, a tribal region in south Gujarat. In this case it
is not the urban folk who are the target audience, but the adivasi
Rathvas. Darpana’s awareness programme which focuses
on infant and maternal mortality, entitled “The Acting Healthy
Project”, is supervised by Mallika Sarabhai and supported by
Artventure, Singapore, along with Bhasha Academy, a partner
non-governmental organisation (NGO) working in Tejgarh,
south Gujarat. G N Devy, the founder of Bhasha Academy, was
asked by Darpana whether he could send a group of tribals
to act in a play for a tribal audience. The group would tour the
villages for a month or six weeks, perform every day, and
engage the tribals in a colloquium. Devy informs us that though
“thrilled”, he was apprehensive about the colloquium:
I was very apprehensive about the last part [colloquium]. To go to a
tribal village is one thing, to admire their culture or to talk about development
too is relatively free of risks, but to expose them in their own
locations, to hold a mirror to them – as theatre has done throughout its
history – is fraught with risks. One does not know how the audiences
would react to criticism targeted at them, particularly if this was to happen
in remote villages and during half-lit evenings. I kept praying that
no harm comes to any of the actors (Darpana 2008: 30, italics added).
The supposed unpredictable and volatile elements which
made Devy pray for the safety of the actors also represent the
adivasi Rathvas as exotic. In what follows I would like to
suggest that there might be a fundamental distortion in the
“mirror” itself because of the questionable assumptions about
the adivasis – the prospective Bhavai audience. What is remarkable
about the project is the perception of the Darpana
team regarding the Rathvas of Chhota Udaipur. Darpana felt
that “Chhota Udaipur is in dire need of interventions to educate
people” and decided “to use its ‘performance for social
change’ model to tackle the issues of infant and maternal mortality
in this area” (Darpana 2008: 5). For the Darpana team,
ancient adivasi traditions and beliefs are responsible for their
ill-health and lack of progress: “Even today people in this area
blindly follow age old traditions that affect their health and
hinder progress” (ibid). Its research data states that the “pregnant
women are not aware of the injections and medicines that
they should be taking during their pregnancy. They also don’t
know how to give proper care to their infants, such as the
necessity of breastfeeding, timely vaccinations, and medicines”
(ibid: 7). Moreover, from the perspective of Darpana,
“in most of the villages children are delivered by untrained
midwives, unscientifi cally and inhumanly”. And according to
their research adivasi “children are raised as dictated by
superstition and tradition” (ibid: 8-9). It is not entirely clear
what kind of research methods were used by Darpana to arrive
at these culturally insensitive and questionable conclusions.
The assumption here consists in the view that whatever “hinders
progress” is backwardness, unscientifi c, and superstitious.
McGrane (1989: 99) has pointed out that it is the commitment
to the concept of progress, and the peculiar ways of
conceiving it, which produces the notion of the cultural other
as “primitive”. In the past, the British colonial administrators
and missionaries had used similar language to portray Indians
as superstitious, ignorant and unscientifi c. History has a knack
of repeating itself.

After these diagnoses, “Darpana had to decide on the best
means of communicating with the villagers on the topics of infant
and maternal mortality.” In order to make the topics more
accessible and digestible, “Darpana chose to adopt the techniques
of Bhavai, Gujarati folk theatre. In this way not only
would the message be conveyed effectively, but a dying art
form would also be preserved” (Darpana 2008: 11, italics added).
types of mortalities simultaneously: that of infant/ maternal
and of Bhavai. So they set out to train the Rathvas to perform
Bhavai through a week-long workshop in Ahmedabad with
Damini Mehta as its coordinator. The workshop began with
a discussion on infant and maternal mortality and these
materials were used to create a script which was then
translated to Rathvi language to produce the Bhavai play
(Darpana 2008: 12). Devy gives the following information
about the Bhavai workshop:

The theatre workshop began in Ahmedabad; and soon the news came
that three of the girls who had volunteered to act could not pronounce
words properly. They were replaced promptly. But, this posed a
challenge for Darpana, and that is the need to bridge the gap between
the language such as typically used in a bhavai and the language that
the adivasis speak and understand (Darpana 2008: 30, italics added).

Invocation to Hindu Gods
Perhaps what is overlooked by Devy and Darpana is the fact
that Bhavai performance in the Rathva cultural matrix is not
merely a matter of bridging the linguistic “gap”. Here, the
Rathvas (girls who could not pronounce words properly)
become “exotic” in terms of cultural otherness. It is important
to note that this cultural otherness and exoticisation is produced
through the representation of the adivasis. Mason (1998:
159-60) writes: “The site of generation of the exotic is not some
supposed extralingual reality, but a representational site. In
other words, the exotic is not originally located somewhere
else and then secondarily refl ected in representations. Rather,
it is the product of those very representations, produced
through the process of exoticisation”. Moreover, the form and
content of Bhavai are highly culture-specifi c in the sense that
this folk-theatre had evolved within a particular Hindu religious
milieu, patronage system, cultural matrix, and linguistic
context. In contrast, the adivasi world view is far removed
from the language, idioms and cultural and religious templates
of traditional Bhavai. So the actors who are the adivasis
had to be taught about invocation to Hindu gods before they
could master the fi ner points of Bhavai: “Every Bhavai play begins
with an invocation to the Hindu god Ganesha, which the
actors also learned…” (Darpana 2008: 12). Incidentally, Darpana,
which consistently speaks about the “traditions” of the
Rathvas as the prime cause of their backwardness, seems oblivious
that the “invocation to the Hindu god Ganesha” is very
much part of a “tradition” called Hinduism.
Given the assumptions about the Rathvas, this urban-based
Academy could not think of transmitting medical knowledge
through adivasi cultural idioms because according to Darpana
(2008: 13) “the people of this region don’t have many sources
of entertainment…” Between 4 March 2008 and 23 April 2008,
in two phases, the theatre group had 61 performances in
different locations in Chhota Udaipur (Darpana 2008: 32-35).
After the Bhavai performance there were interactive sessions
between the medical team of the Bhasha Academy and the
audience. The medical team inquired about their traditions
related to pregnancy and asked the people “why they were
following these traditions from the ages, [and] what their
excuses for practising the same for so long were”. With a view
to enlightening them, the medical team “gave them the
scientifi c vision through which they could realise the facts. They
were also explained the dangerous side of their age-old
rituals and traditions…” (Darpana 2008: 13, italics added).
Like many Bollywood fi lms, Darpana’s narrative has a happy
ending because the Bhavai performance apparently enhanced
the knowledge of the adivasis (Darpana 2008: 26-31).
The so-called cons ciousness-raising or conscientisation is
an extremely tricky business and it can easily slide into a
“civilising mission”.

5 Appropriation: Ambiguities and Ambivalences
In this section I would like to look at some of the ambiguities
and ambivalences involved in the efforts to appropriate Bhavai
by experimental theatre groups. Darpana’s appropriation
refl ects the reconstitution of this folk-theatre as urban folktheatre,
even when its consumers are non-urban audiences
such as the Rathvas. Though it is reconstituted for the adivasis
by Darpana, the rationality the Bhavai communicates is eminently
urban-based. On the one hand, traditional Bhavai is
deeply embedded in oral-aural culture, and as a folk theatre it
always belongs to a specifi c region, language and ecological
cycle, and participating community. On the other hand, urban
folk-theatre represents a peculiar form of texuality embedded
in print and modernity. Moreover, as Dharwadker (2005: 322)
points out, urban folk-theatre is a transportable entity in the
sense that the reconstituted folk-theatre can be detached from
all of its cultural particularities and contexts and performed
anywhere an audience is available. The urban folk-theatre
becomes the dichotomous site of power in the very constitution
of self and the other. For the urban folk-theatre, the self is
constituted by scientifi c rationality, knowledge, and modernity
and the other is constituted by tradition, ignorance and
superstition. It would appear that Darpana conceives the
Rathvas as tabula rasa, a blank slate, to be fi lled with “proper”
knowledge. Simultaneously, divested of its sociocultural contexts,
Bhavai becomes an empty container and form which
could be fi lled practically with anything.
Notions related to experimental theatres such as the “theatre
of roots” or “return to the roots” imply not only a yearning
to return to the roots but also a loss of roots. It has been pointed
out that such loss of roots is embedded in the experiences of
modernity. As Leuthold (2011: 27) has noted, modernism
“invo lves formal, technological and cultural ‘progress’ that
may create a sense of distance from the past”. He calls this
return to the roots “primitivism” in aesthetics by which he
means the admiration of the virtues of cultures at an earlier
stage of development. Leuthold (2011: 27) writes: “Primitivism,
by rooting expression in primal or original impulses, potentially
counters the dislocation that occurs within modernism”.
The urban folk-theatre production of Bhavai, restructured
for the gaze of urban consumers as “authentic tradition”, is
dependent on an imagined romantic relationship between the
folk traditions and their cultural artefacts as coming from a
distant past. The urban folk-theatre also becomes a site at
which the exotic representation of “difference” is constituted.
Among other things the exotic “has the connotations of a
stimulating or exciting difference” (Ashcroft et al 2004: 94).
However, it must be noted that the exotic does not exist in
itself; rather, it is produced through cultural imaginaries.
Mason (1998:1-2) argues that the exotic “is not something that
exists prior to its discovery. It is the very act of discovery that
produces the exotic as such, and it produces it in varying degrees
of wildness or domestication.” As a representation of cultural
difference, the reconstituted Bhavai carries within it the
perception of otherness, as coming from an earlier stage of
cultural development. Cultural difference is transposed as an
aesthetic value precisely in terms of the exotic by the urban
folk-theatre. It has been pointed out that “the exotic is the perfect
term to describe the domesticating process through which
commodities are taken from the margins and reabsorbed into
the mainstream culture” (Huggan 2001: 22). But the exotic
possesses a paradoxical nature in the sense that it cannot be
totally domesticated because then the exotic ceases to be
exotic. Thus the exotic entails ambiguities and occupies the
liminal space between strangeness and familiarity.
In post-Independent India urban-based experimental theatre
had been appropriating folk forms for the consumption of
predominantly urban audiences. As Bharucha (1993: 7) points
out, the proponents of this new form consist of “a group of
post-Independence Indian artists and scholars, who have
‘invented’ a ‘tradition’, based on principles of ‘authenticity’ and
the search for ‘roots.’” The urban folk theatre occupies the
dichotomous space constituted by the “folk” and the “urban”.
Precisely because this space is dichotomous it also refl ects
certain ambivalence. There is an important dimension emerging
from the urban appropriation of folk-theatre which is
refl ected in the binary opposition between the “people” and
the “folk”. To some extent the political construction of folktheatre
as people’s theatre suggests the European Enlightenment
defi nition of folk as the people. But in India the term folk
came to be associated mainly with the village, peasant, and
non-elite forms, where as the “people” are constituted by the
urban, elite audiences, bringing a wedge between the people
and the folk. The assumption here is that it was the “folk” who
performed for the “people” and not the other way around
(Bharucha 1996: 79-89; Dharwadker 2005: 312). Such assumptions
underpin the discourses by the urban elites of “training”
“educating” and “saving” the folk traditions. As Dharwadker
(2005: 323) points out, the anti-modern aesthetic of the urban
folk-theatre, which interrogates the direction that the nation
has taken, tends to give folk forms an aura of exoticism on the
urban stage “creating an often unbridgeable gap between the
spectator and the spectacle”.

Conclusions
The voice of the Bhavaiyas who are located outside the modern
theatre productions, and the discussions about them, is mute.
These modern productions are decontextualised and far
removed from the actual life of the Bhavai artists themselves
which might explain, at least in part, the absent voices of the
Bhavai artists themselves. Moreover, I would like to suggest
that many of these interventions also make the Bhavaiyas
powerless to “act”. Here, the “act” is about the agency and
identity of the non-elite folk artists who seek to constitute and
represent their selfhood through artistic pursuits within the
framework of an overarching social order. Among other things,
to act signifi es the subject’s capacity to render acts of cultural
performance meaningful within a socially-defi ned context. It
also denotes the many-layered linkages between the worlds of
performers and their audiences who stand within the framework
of a socially and economically mediated symbiotic
relationship. In other words, historically they had been Bhavaiyas
through the performance of Bhavai for a non-elite audience,
indicating the close linkages between cultural performance
and shared identity. Taken together, these perspectives
imply that Bhavai as folk-theatre is located in a set of temporal
and spatial prerequisites, and simultaneously it also means
that divested of these conditions, a folk tradition like Bhavai
ceases to be what it is. This is not to be construed as a deterministic
position which sees folk-theatre as entrapped in a spatio-temporal vacuum. On the contrary, the effort here is
precisely to historicise it by moving away from idealistic and
romantic views about it.
Where does this leave the folk-theatre called Bhavai and the
original community of the Bhavaiyas? There are still a few
places where traditional Bhavai is performed in rural Gujarat. It
has been pointed out that in spite of good intentions, “no major
movement has occurred which has led the way towards a genuine
revival of bhavai, and so the original actors and their community
continue to struggle to survive” (Brandon 2002: 83).
Meanwhile, Bhavai is being used for various purposes in Gujarat.
In its new avatar, Bhavai is used by the Election Commission to
promote voting by Tata Motors to launch a new car model, and
by the Indian Dental Association to create awareness regarding
the evil effects of addictive substances like paan-masala and
gutka (Contractor 2001; Khanna 2012; The Times of India 2002).
The Bhavai style and form are being used by social activists and
street theatre groups to promote social awareness in Gujarat.
At the end of the day, in the collective memory of Gujarat, Bhavai
appears as a cultural relic of a bygone era.


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