P rasanna could have easily been a conformist, but he chose not to be, right from the days when he dropped out of his doctoral programme at IIT, Kanpur. He made inroads into every corner of the State by setting up the theatre group, Samudaya. With Abhivaykti Abhiyaan, he pressed for regional theatre being accorded the status of national theatre. Critical of modernity, Prasanna has espoused Gandhian values and thought, and Charaka, a rural handloom women’s collective that he set up 15 years ago in the village of Bheemanakone is an outcome of his beliefs. Prasanna, who has firmly voiced his faith in rural renewal, believes it is an antidote to government’s urban-centric policies. Last year, he, along with hundreds of weavers started a satyagraha in Badanval, a Khadi centre which Gandhi is supposed to have visited. Prasanna has recently directed Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj for Rangavalli, Mysore, with which he hopes that youngsters will bring back Gandhi and his beliefs into our midst.
Excerpts from an interview in Mysore:
Do you see this as a continuation of the movement you started at Badanval?
The movement itself has been happening for many years in various forms. It began with Charkha, followed by advocacy work in handlooms, shifted to region and regional languages to people driven advocacy. Then it was the handloom satyagraha, where we marched with weavers for 350 kilometres in the districts of Karnataka where weaving is intense. But soon after we realised that fighting for any one sector will not help because there are similar problems in other sectors as well. But when we undertook the satyagraha in Badanval, huge crowds poured in and what was amazing was the number of youngsters who turned up. It was an eye opener and as the next step of the movement, we took a conscious decision to reach out to them. We went to different parts of Karnataka -- Raichur, Koppal, Dharwad, Dakshina Kannada and began to engage with youngsters and activist groups. At the end of it, we decided to set up groups of young people, Grama Seva Sangha.
Some of the groups were very active, for instance the one in Bangalore. But we did not want to spread too much, just to check how they would function. We had many workshops with them: it is a mixed group of very young people -- bank officers, teachers, IT professionals etc. Conceptually, the plan was to help them understand Gandhi, Ambedkar, Vivekananda and the idea of Shramadan , which will form the core of their activity.
Parallelly, they will go and work with a rural organisation working in any sector. This way, they will get the rich benefit of understanding Indian villages. I have felt that the link between city youth and Indian villages in very crucial.
Personally, I too felt that I needed to do something more than just reading books, and that is when I thought of Hind Swaraj . I felt I should try bringing the text on to stage. It was not easy because it is ideological and has little emotional content. I worked very hard, I did the script four times over before I began to feel that the play was happening.
How did you deal with the format of Hind Swaraj ?
I did not retain it as a historical text, but derived contemporary meanings from it. I have introduced characters, and contextualised into it not just Ambedkar, Vivekananda etc but also issues like global warming, climate change, environment and more. Hind Swaraj is there, but there is also more than the original text.
Hind Swaraj is an interrogation, and perhaps with the self?
It is also a confrontation with those freedom fighters who were in favour of violence. The reader in the text not a tame reader, he resists Gandhi politically. While I am conscious of these things, the editor in my play is a contemporary Gandhian.
In your interaction with youngsters, do you think Gandhi and Gandhian thought attracts them?
I am convinced that the young see and recognise the value of Gandhi. They are able to handle the present situation far better than any of us. Whatever negative they have imbibed it is from us, they have become natural inheritors of this evil life which we have built for them. But intuitively, they know that this is not what they want. Look at the amazing number of people who are coming into theatre. It is not because they want to later act in television and cinema. I see a high quality of leadership, and willing to make great sacrifices.
In the play, it is not like we have made an idol of Gandhi, we have made fun of him. Just as we admire and respect him deeply, we need space for differences as well.
But the thing is only Gandhi can be made fun of, isn’t it?
Absolutely, only he can be touched. I don’t like the fact that the others are protected so much. Why are we protecting Basavanna, Kabir, Ambedkar…? They are strong enough to hold their own ground. I am appalled when I see metal grills around Ambedkar’s statue! The statue cannot even be dusted. If someone wants to vandalize Ambedkar’s statue that is the most they can do, can Ambedkar be touched?
With this play, do you think your activism and pursuit of theatre has come together?
Right. I have realized in a very profound way that my politics and theatre are interlinked. The whole notion of simple living came to me from theatre and not from Gandhi. From Alkazi in fact. I remember him taking us to Kabari Bazaar in Delhi, to understand the beauty of second hand objects. He insisted on frugal practices, and that we cleaned our own rehearsal spaces. Simple living has huge consequences and unless millions of people start advocating it, we cannot save environment. Unless you deconstruct yourself in terms of machine, industry, lifestyle there are no solutions to the problems we are facing.
Simple living is a very profound idea. For instance, what is the crisis in faith? Every faith tells you to keep Sukha away. And the only thing we are doing is consuming, acquiring, desiring for more… always. Nietzsche said “God is dead”. Why? Because we are leading opposite lives of what God wanted us to do. Theatre is the best weapon to fight it. Shall I tell you why? The most disgusting affluence is cinema. Cinema is not bad, but it is rich and wasteful. As opposed to cinema, theatre has to be poor and frugal.
All my life I have been swinging between two ends – my political commitments and artistic pursuits. Now I think they have merged. I don’t need to do different things to fulfil these requirements.
Good theatre cannot be immune to politics. It is always responding to society. But a writer, more of the contemporary times, can absolve himself from social truths.
Theatre is going through Navodaya, a Renaissance. In the 40s, writers responded through literature. Eighty years hence, it has engulfed the poor, village people, women, children everyone. This is a machine led civilization. Theatre is the most organic medium to fight it. Let me tell you, if Karanth, Kuvempu and Bendre happen again, it will be in theatre and not in literature. The number of women, dalits, marginalized, downtrodden… involved in theatre is mind boggling.
But don’t you think it is too ambitious a dream, this modern society giving up or living without its machines?
I am not trying to romanticize. I know how badly we are infected. But I am very hopeful about theatre and the impact it will have on society.
The problem is that Gandhian philosophy has become an ism . I cannot look at Gandhi like that. Our late writer U.R. Ananthamurthy wrote a book, Hindutva vs. Hind Swaraj. I had a problem with it. The book takes one aspect of Hind Swaraj and blows it out of proportion. It has made Hind Swaraj’s opposition to Hindutva all encompassing. But the core issue that Gandhi is concerned about is our understanding of civilization itself. About Sabhyate , dignity. The problem with modernity is that they don’t even consider it as a responsibility, they speak of it only as a right. How do we construct a good civilization was Gandhi’s core concern. From there came other issues like non-violence, truth, anti-communalisation etc. I think if the Ambedkarites begin to see this, they will not oppose Gandhi.
When we promote anything as a value it becomes a problem. In fact, this was what Tagore said to Gandhi when he was promoting Charkha and Khadi. Don’t you think we are at that point in history when we should all find our own Gita?
I totally agree with you. Gandhi is not a product, he is a process. What is most fascinating and the most moving thing about this man is how rigourously he puts himself through every process, makes mistakes, corrects himself… constantly shaping himself. When that is him, why are we so final about Gandhism?
Someone recently asked me, “So, have you become a Gandhian and stopped being a Marxist?” In the 1930s and 40s the biggest debates on Hind Swaraj was led by the leading Marxists and socialists of that time. They were not rejecting Gandhi, but counterposed him with questions, which he answered extremely well. All of Gandhi’s friends in Europe were the finest Marxists and Socialists.
Now we are awfully ideological, we are only living in our heads, our hands and feet have shrunk, our emotions have shrunk. We now have huge head and dwarfed bodies. Everything has to be decided ideologically for us, while nothing actually gets decided ideologically.
You seem more positive and hopeful than you were a year or two ago?
I went through hell, an endless tunnel of hell with pain of all sorts. I had become angry, incoherent because of that. But now, I think I have come out of it, to a large extent.
