The following article is published in Daily Star. Readers may wish to visit http://mohaguru.humanists.net/ to know more about Aroj Ali Matubbar, the truly homegrown philosopher and Freethinker of Bangladesh.
Avijit.
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Some five years back I watched Nandikar's Meghanath Badh in Calcutta,
the Academy Mancho was full. Before going to make a critic on Aroj I like
to cite a bit of that experience. Group leader Rudra Prasad Sengupta
started his opening speech. He thanked audience for their presence in the
auditorium instead of being prey of cable TV.
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| Calcutta is famous for lot of things especially for modern
theatre practice. Dish culture sends second wave of death shivering
through the spine of theatre. Like Rudra, other practitioners can also
feel the chill by experiencing the engulfing paw of satellite
entertainment. As now similarly in the '50s also it was a common saying
that cinema was killing theatre, but theatre remained. Same thing is going
to happen this time also; theatre is too powerful to diminish. In Dhaka
after 97 local satellite TV station has sucked a great number of theatre
and other live performers and technicians. Then it became difficult to
make regular show as the group members are often busy with media
schedules. So the doers has been withering not the audience.
First thing stuck me after seeing Aroj, though it is true with other stage play also that aesthetic and critical consideration can wait; it is enough to praise the capability to arrange a show in a country where not govt. has ever had any well thought cultural policies. Specifically to develop live performance. Before going to critical assessment, I like to cheer Tarik Anam Khan and his comrades for making possible Aroj's performance.
Brook classified theatre from his long drawn experience into four categories deadly, holy, rough and immediate. He condemned deadly theatre as ineffective and bourgeois, appreciated holy and rough but strongly advocated for immediate theatre.
This type of classification is possible among our native criticism of art specially theatre. Analogy here can be deadly, oily, scary and much more necessary but very much absent immediate criticism.
In this occasion, I am trying to make an immediate type of criticism. This ambition is the result of latest Natyakendra production on the controversial personality and life of Aroj Ali Matubbar. I was waiting to see its 25th show and then to write this after considering the impact on the floating time, but when I told this to Pankaj, light designer of the play; he simply cut me out by exclaimed that the production may not cross that much show. This is frustrating, I thought after seeing their first performance at Mahila Samiti auditorium that the play will be picked by so called civil society and a vigorous vibration of secularism at least in Dhaka city, but alas!
It rarely happens that you watch a performance and get into troubles; problem of assessing it; sometime feel to praise sometime to condemned and live under pressure until you change some of your preconceived notion about things. Natyakendra's new production Aroj Charit when I saw their first public show got me trapped into troubles. First thing occurred in me I perceive that I felt trapped to write a critic or like to explore an article from the base of that performance. From that desire one day I went to their rehearsal, before time. I was discussing informally with performers, lastly make an appointment with Tarik Anam Khan to have a chat with him.
Since I had a long discussion with him over a cup of tea in his apartment's carefully ornamented drawing room by cultural artificats; which spun over not only that particular performance but also overall condition of Bangladesh's theatre and his own career graph, my trouble has been multiplied because still I was unable to proceed. However, I was familiar with Aroj Ali's writings like other youth in the city with an atheist zeal, I also have my share with anti-religious literature with leftist slant. Anyway, I was not getting my old copy of 'Satyer Shadhan' a cheap paperback edition. That was the time of HSC, 1986. I do not know how but at that time through some mysterious assumption we accepted him as an eccentric and amazing anti-Islamic man. This time I collected hardbound Pathak Shamabesh copy of his collected works (part 1) and went through it, which includes writing by and on him. The impression I got is highly problematic one as in the post-enlightened era, science and reason is gradually suspect in the west itself. Aroj's wholehearted struggle was to establish rationality against religious believe. From Eastern point of view, which has not yet get any particular shape, the monopoly of science and reason over truth is in a much more way condemnable. Structuralist and post-structuralist studies have clearly shown that we are living in a complex post modern (?) time zone where knowledge is not heavenly or innocent but from a Foucaultdian perspective just like religion, art or capital engaged in all engulfing power mechanism.
So it will be misleading if we miss to situate our critical endeavor within the microphysics of power. Of course, Aroj was a praiseworthy person: his indomitable energy for the truth he realized was heroic but what we need to get rid off is eulogy. I must say rather poor eulogy. Eulogistic perspective makes a work of art monochrome and misses too much: shades, tones, and dimensions. Moreover, this pattern of personality cult breeds from Feudal Durbar literature Brecht tried a lot to escape from this in his Galileo but it is too hard to do so as our most of art ideals shaped in Feudal societies. This objection I am raising for another reason also, selection of facts from Aroj's life in this production does not cover his versatility and awake primarily compassion rather than his manliness, agitate tears not spine. Tarik Anam Khan told me that they had taken scrupulous care not to make attack on common mans religious sentiment. Here they take a fly from Aroj, his whole project was to dislodge religion by scientific outlook through Socratic way of questioning and besides putting scientific data. His intention was to put science as an alternative to religion and he was a (if I try my best to avoid simplifying him) liberal Marxist. If we take liberty of being suspicious, we may take some greater notice of his pathology against religion regarding his mother's burial consequence.
There is a serious problematic in the view of theatre not to shock audience, even if we take a softer stand than JBS, who proclaimed that audience should be shocked often to break their inertia. This view involved a mutual pass giving between doer and seer of theatre that we are doing and you are seeing so both of us are good. Problem lies somewhere else among third party. This is the first step towards the deadly theatre and this way, whole enterprise of theatre become nose up elite culture rather than dealing issues and problems seriously. Considering people simpler and weaker for debates on harsh truth and giving an other and sentimental version presupposes reformer stance in which Paolo Freiry dissect the hidden and subconscious structure of oppressive mentality. It would be far straight to bring a polemic on Aroz's anti religiosity rather than censoring and softening him. There are enough space and strong current of debates on sub-continental horizon after Babri mosque incident, to raise question on his thought-scheme.
Aroj's standpoint was rationality and reason resultantly he was seeking secular ideals... so socialism alias communism is the only way for the mankind. Without this by the use of rocket, robot and the dreams of heaven and hell endeavor to develop the society is nothing but eyewash. Aroj Ali Matobbar collected works, 1, pathak shamabesh, 2000. All these are renaissance breed humanism's conceptual data's which are at present being challenged from multiple perspectives... After the fall of Berlin wall and dismantling SU, his socialist panacea is no more convincing. Asian societies are traditional, here formula of social change one cannot think sans religion: this realization got currency ever since Babri Mosque episode. Secularism, the essence of Aroz's thinking in South Asian societies, according to specialists, if want to succeed should have find some way with religion. The only way that secularism will succeed in south Asia is if both religion and secularism are taken seriously (T.N. Madan, Secularism in its place, Journal of South Asian Studies, Nov 1987). Leave Asia in west itself modernity/secularism is in confusion, it is mostly considered as an artifact of ideology rather than a tool of science. Edward Said's voice is even harsher; for him the project of modernity grew up with and serves as a tool of western imperialism.
The relationship of the scientific state of rationality looks curious in the light of M. Foucault's exposure of the unreasoning and authoritarian basis of much scientific knowledge and of recent work in the history of science which points to the significant role played in many major scientific discoveries, or 'revelations' by specific pattern of religious belief -- not an absence of such belief (cited in D. Washbrook --------). Beside this tradition seems to have undergone remarkable re-invigoration from contact with modernity. Considering these global perceptual shifting and our sub continental historical division based on religious discrimination then the birth of Bangladesh and the present rise of fundamentalism all over the sub continent is substantially enough to confuse anyone while presenting a person like Aroj Ali. Not only that, an alarming phenomena fear of fundamentalists involve here. Playwright Masum Reja openly exclaimed this dangerous state of affairs in Bangladesh where artists have no social political and state protection for the freedom of expression. Here politicians always shouting and shedding crocodile's tear for democracy but when some basic theme of democracy gets attack they fail to take democratic move. If it is so, is not to more expected from artists that they would take risk because we have to seek truth even if it brings most discomfort, remember Nietzsche. Otherwise is it better, simply changing the subject as some people felt or something is better than nothing?
Fundamentalism is a historical crisis in the sub-continent. In pre-modern era, thinkers and visionaries devised some way to get rid off this crisis. If we take a glance to the Bhakti movement and sub-continental Sufism, we can see, they, unlike modernist view had found a third way; by not rejecting religions but assimilating and reforming those. At the same time, their thoughts satisfy mass's religious tendency and defy discrimination. The suppression and withering of those movements with the advent of so called modern time is not as simple as it generally recognized, their lies multiple currents of local and global manipulation of elite class as cause. Now if we like to escape the specter of religious crusade in South Asia and fundamentalist deprivation in Bangladesh we have to deal the subject more deeply and when it is a stage show we cannot proceed further without considering the politics of performance possibly included with the subject. My intention is not to condemn Natyakendra but just to show what a body of sensitive and controversial issues their performance brought fore and wish that Natyakendra will be able not to arrange 100th show of the play will make this performance a platform of vigorous debate on the issues discussed.
The drama was staged in Dhaka, recently. |