A New Sociability: The Colonial Urbes Prima Goes to the Theatre

Abstract

The European élite undertook to manufacture a native élite. They picked out promising adolescents; they branded them, as with a red-hot iron, with the principles of western culture, they stuffed their mouths full with high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth. After a short stay in the mother country they were sent home, whitewashed. These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers; they only echoed. From Paris, from London, from Amsterdam we would utter the words ‘Parthenon! Brotherhood!’ and somewhere in Africa or Asia lips would open … thenon! … therhood!’ It was the golden age. (Jean Paul Sartre in the Preface to ‘Wretched of the Earth’ by Franz Fanon)

A dictionary would tell us about the English word ‘sociability’ that it is the quality of being sociable or being in interaction with people. The theatre is, as we discussed in the previous chapters, such a space of sociability. Within the colonial situation, this space of interaction is marked by a very unique dynamic. The colonial space is often seen as a space of encounter between two different sociables that are always in a play of power; however it is arguable and we have discussed that earlier in the Introduction. Essentially these are two incommensurable sociables that have gotten together in space and time for reasons beneficial and often detrimental. We have called this interaction. The reason for such an unequal interaction, or its incommensurability, is somewhat inherent to the very logic of their coming together, which was not aleatory, and hence we have not called it an encounter. Nevertheless, they remain affected by each other. The question of reform, central to how the colonized sociable identified itself as a subject, was also key to how the identity of the colonizer was created where each one identified the other as distinct. However there is no reason to believe that the colonial psyche was built overnight. The curiosity of the other’s existence had been an integral part even before. Only that within this new space of interaction, initially, there had been far more willingness to adapt than to identify a knowledge system about an ‘other’ that needed to be worked upon. To validate my argument, an interesting case study would be the interactions of the theatrical that happened between India and Europe in the sixteenth century. It is often understood to be ‘the first strong Western cultural infiltration’ at least in the south of India. The coming of the Portuguese in the area and subsequent missionary activities by them initiated a process of acculturation. Chavittunatakam evolved out of this interaction although some scholars believe that it had already started evolving from the times of the Syrian Christians in Kerala. Chavittunatakam, which literally means stamping theatre, has often been compared to miracle plays of the West. It has been argued that the Syrian Christians imitated the use of drama in pagan religions and therefore in India they continued with the tradition. With the Portuguese came the Roman Catholic Church, which considered drama as the ‘citadel of adverse moral influences’, but nevertheless was unable to stop such performances, and hence biblical themes came to be their subject, in order to avoid conflict with the Church. Performances like Genova Natakam exalting the deeds of a Roman Emperor; Kaaralman Charitam based on the life of Rollang, a military chief of Emperor Charlemagne who attained martyrdom; and many other such performances that used realistic action, detailed characterization, curtains on stage, etc. highlighted influences both of western theatre and Kathakali the most popular theatre form during that period in this area. The form was patronized by the Portuguese missionaries. The Chavittunatakam of Kerala also influenced religious performances in Tamil Nadu and Ceylon, which were popularized by the missionaries especially in Tamil-speaking areas. In Tamil Nadu, the form is also known as Terukkuttu. In some Catholic villages of Ceylon, a form called Nadagama is performed which shows major influences of the Chavittunatakam. However, the evolution of these performances which were integrally related to Christianity never really moved any further from the south. Although it is believed that Chavittunatakam replaced pre-Portuguese Hindu art forms like Kuuttu and Kutiyattam, the form itself almost ceased to exist later. So the interaction between the English East India Company and subsequent British rule in India was not the first of the occurrences of cultural hybridization in the subcontinent. There has been a historical evolution of performance forms through cultural interaction even before. However, the reason for an unequal interaction could be traced in the unwillingness of the British colonizer to adapt to cultural elements within its own vocabulary as it realized itself as the ruling/colonizing power in the subcontinent. The events that led to the Mutiny of 1857 ‘uprising’ played a significant role in chalking out boundaries. Although there were several aspects for the rise of discontent amongst the Hindus and the Muslims who formed the majority population of colonial India, leading to the events of 1857, one of the significant triggers was religious intrusion by Christian English colonizers. The East India Company’s patronage of Church activities and at the same time the suspicion of the colonized population regarding reforms that threatened religious traditions played an important role in the rising discontent. The uprising of 1857 was brutally suppressed. By ‘The Government of India Act of 1858’, the Company’s territories in India were vested in the Queen, and a conscious attempt was made from England to stay away from religious activities of the natives. At the same time, the colonial nature of government created a public sphere fundamentally different from that in England and France. Like Sandria Freitag has argued in Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, what emerged in India was not a public sphere that would participate in collective rituals identifying itself with, as also moulding an ideological framework, coming to equate the community to the nation. Rather what transpired were public arenas based on distinctive community rituals based on dominant religious practices. Its distinctiveness was maintained by the colonial government’s apparent no-interference policy. While communities, religiously sanctioned, got a chance to thrive within such a context, the English population in India as a result got as much chance to stay aloof from collective activities of the natives. ‘Theatre’s’ so-called emergence in such a context cannot be seen as aleatory, but it needs to be seen in a different light that is rather historical. The late eighteenth century interaction between the English and the colonized population’s elite found ‘theatre’ as just another tool of sociability that at the same time negotiated power relations. This chapter tries to locate the emergence of ‘theatre’ within such a historical conjuncture.

‘Urbes prima in Indis’ was a name given to Bombay as the foremost city in India by the British. Here it is being used in a plural sense of both Calcutta and Bombay.