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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