Reviewed by Uma Katju (NOT IN AUTHORS LIST, PLEASE ADD)

“HOW can we even begin to address the question of literacy, if we ignore the question of what is available to read?” This pointed query posed in the foreword to Gender, Politics, and Performance in South Asia is arguably the crux of a book which traverses a wide range of themes, concepts and fields of study within the performing arts. The book is a collection of papers emerging out of a conference organised by the Karachi-based theatre group, Tehreek-i-Niswan. It aims to analyse the links between gender, class politics and the performing arts, an area the editors state is a ‘gap’ in the study of South Asia. While focusing in part on the Tehreek-i-Niswan’s theatre work, the book covers a number of different artistic practices. Dance, political theatre, women’s representation in cinema and popular forms, the life histories of women artists and cultural activists, literature and mural painting — the material studied is rich, extensive and diverse.

However, the book’s deep-seated yet tacit concern seems to be reflected in this explicit statement about literacy — that it is inherently bound with the quality of literature available to be read. To extend this argument to the performing arts would mean that it is not enough to simply claim that we, society as a whole, need the performing arts, but there is a particular kind that is needed, one that is socially engaged, that serves to analyse, critique and inspire critical questioning in its audience. The issue of the kind of performing arts that society should produce is a site of deep contestation, and the book explores different aspects of this issue, be it the workings of gender and class, or by invoking the forces of history, identity, religion and so on.

The first section of the book deals most strongly with the paths that theatre practice has taken in different parts of South Asia. The search for a theatre practice for the ‘nation’ is deeply connected to the search for national identity and the perceived compulsions of history. The creation of Pakistan, Partition and the subsequent desire of the Pakistani establishment to carve out an identity independent of ‘Indian’ influences also included severing bonds with ‘Indian’ performing arts. Thus classical dance was no longer considered a part of Pakistani heritage. Further, the history of political theatre in Pakistan came to ignore the Bengali theatre produced during the years of struggle for Bangladeshi independence.

In contrast to these establishment claims are the attempts to explore and revive the classical traditions in Pakistan as well as renegotiate their histories. It is in this context that we can place, for in-stance, Sheema Kermani’s idea that the roots of Odissi dance be traced not to the temples of Puri but the dancing figures of the Indus Valley. Syed Ahmed Jamil offers that the way forward may be a theatre of ‘routes’ rather than ‘roots’, as the theatre produced in India from the 1960s-80s was termed. This period of theatre involved practitioners in India (like B.V. Karanth, Habib Tanvir and K.N. Panikkar) and across Asia, moving away from Western theatre traditions and basing their practice on the theatrical and performance heritage of their own countries. For Jamil, these practitioners ‘nar-rated’ the nation in varied ways producing different ‘routes’ of finding the nation. Fundamentally in such a practice, the “[narration of] the nation as a community…is forever evolving, forever devising, and forever seeking a new line of flight.”

The second section of the book presents articles specifically on the work of Tehreek-i-Niswan which traces its emergence to the agitations against General Ziaul Haq’s rule in Pakistan in the 1980s, counting itself as one of the theatre groups that practiced its craft in the face of the systematic attack on the performing arts by the establishment.

Taking inspiration from a left-theatre tradition, especially the work and practice of Bertolt Brecht, and staging plays by European and Indian dramatists like Henrik Ibsen, Asghar Wajahat and Safdar Hashmi, this group articulated the desires, frustrations and daily injustices faced by women in a deeply feudal space, whilst keeping the trials of working-class women at the very core of their work. Their work is analysed as falling within the Brechtian tradition of inspiring a spirit of rational thinking and criticality, that is, theatre should not lead to catharsis but critical reflection of the state of the world. For instance, in the performance of Gurrya ka Ghar, Julie Holledge writes, the revealing of the rehearsal room to the audience serves as a reminder that the play is, at the end, a play.

The final sections cover themes of women artists and the different performance forms. One of the main concerns is to recover the histories and life stories of prominent women artists and cultural activists. Further, the dynamics of gender and class politics is questioned by looking at the class basis of the different moral and sexual codes to which women are subjected. In the performing arts, middle-class and working-class women seem to inhabit different spheres altogether, with various moral judgments passed against working-class women performers. Similarly certain art forms become ‘respectable’ and are celebrated once they enter the middle-class moral space. The burden of this moral standard is carried by women artists who speak about and explore their sexuality, marginalised even by the very progressive spaces.

This book is an engaging and useful introduction to many themes within the wide ambit of the performing arts in South Asia. One wishes, however, that alongside its engagement with what the arts mean for society, it could have also explored what they may mean for the performers themselves. Kermani, for instance, writes that dance provides a particular kind of power to women, stemming from a deep awareness and control of their bodies. Patriarchal culture considers this power a threat, and thus dance is circumscribed in various ways. It would have been very illuminating to read about other ways in which performance affects the artists or how practitioners transform by delving into performance.

Secondly, there seems to be a tension in the book in the desire to speak to and for the marginalised, but there are inconsistencies in recognising the latter’s cultural expression. The contention that the onus of cultural production must be on the middle class seems misplaced, especially when there is a stated concern for working-class women and their artistic practice. Finally, a comprehensive introduction that brought the overarching themes, ideas and problems together in a concise manner would have been very useful for the reader.

Gender, Politics, and Performance in South Asia

(DANCE)

Edited by Sheema Kermani, Asif Farrukhi and Kamran Asdar Ali

Oxford University Press, Karachi

ISBN 978-0199401925

600pp.