In the introduction to his book Theatrics, Zia Mohyeddin says that “in the pieces that I have written about drama and dramatists, my object has been to explore some of the areas that I feel students of drama might find interesting.”

What has attracted me in the book are primarily the discussions on the start and early development of theatre in pre-Partition India. In fact, they have helped me  get rid of the poor impression we in general carry with respect to Urdu drama and theatre. The start was not so bad after all. And its development under the title of Parsi Theatre was quite remarkable. In the mid-19th century, the whole of India was under its spell. But strangely enough, we are indebted for this to the Parsi impresarios, who were little acquainted with Urdu. Then how did it happen? Mohyeddin tells us the reason: “They were quick to learn that melo-drama (highly popular in England at the time) would be ideally suited to the temperament of our people. It was their astute sense of commerce that told them that Urdu, with its rhetorical flourish and its vast repertoire of masnavis (which told tales of unrequited love) was the appropriate language for their theatrical venture”.

The company which was foremost in popularising Urdu drama was Victoria Natak Mandli with Dadabhai Sohrabji Patel, commonly known as Dadi Patel, as its proprietor. Mohyeddin calls him “patron-in-chief of Urdu theatre.”

The period 1860 to 1925 may be seen, Mohyeddin tells us, as the heyday of Urdu theatre. A host of theatrical companies such as the Victoria, the Alfred and the Elphinstone were in the field competing with one another. Each company had managed to engage a playwright known as munshi. So a number of playwrights such as Talib, Ronaq, Betab and Aram were writing. But the one who dominated the theatrical scene was Agha Hashr Kashmiri. He is the only one who now is known to us. Others have receded into oblivion and their works are mostly unavailable to us.

Here I am reminded of the late Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj who, under the auspices of Majlis-i-Taraqqi-i-Adab, had chalked out an ambitions plan to retrieve the manuscripts of the plays put up during the years of Parsi Theatre and compile and publish them with references to their authors. He had been able to retrieve a large number of these published and unpublished texts and they were going to be published in about 20 volumes. But because of his untimely death, the plan was thwarted. However, I have with me the 13th volume, a big collection of Talib Benarsi’s plays. This means that the plan was near completion when he abruptly met his sad end.

The series of Urdu plays compiled by Taj Sahib begins with the volume Khursheed. Taj Sahib had managed to retrieve this play after a long search and believed that it was the first Urdu play presented on Bombay stage.

The title page of this published play as reproduced here says that it was originally written in Gujrati by Edelji Jamshedji Khori and was later translated into Urdu by Seth Behramji Fardoonji Marzban. The play, when staged in Urdu, was a big hit. As told by Khambatta, a theatre historian, “the Bohras, the Khojas, and the Memons flocked to it in thousands. People used to shower flower petals on their favorite actors.”

Such was the start of Urdu theatre in Bombay. For such an astounding start and its consequent development in later decades it stands indebted to its Parsi promoters. To quote Mohyeddin, “it was entirely due to their efforts that interest in Urdu drama developed, not just in Bombay, but throughout northern India.”

But what happened after the end of Parsi Theatre? Why couldn't Urdu theatre continue to flourish? These are the questions we need to answer.