Habib Tanveer is an eminent theatre personality and one of the greatest theatre gurus of our times. He has written several outstanding plays, including Agra Bazaar, Charandas Chor, Dekh Rahe Hain Nain and Hirma ki Amar Kahani. He studied theatre in 1955-56 at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in Britain. He created his own ’Naya Theatre’ with Chhattisgarhi folk artistes, which included illiterate peasants and poor labourers, in 1959, creating history in contemporary Indian theatre.

Speaking to Habib Tanveer is Rajendra Sharma, poet and editor, Pragatisheel Vasudha, the quarterly journal in Hindi of the Progressive Writers’ Association.

Folk and tribal traditions are full of creativity. Have you come across this in the labour of ordinary workers?

Yes. I used to live in Ber Sarai, Delhi. I saw many women belonging to the Ram-Naam sect. The word ‘Ram-Naam’ was tattooed all over their bodies — their faces, their hands and their feet. They were construction labourers, on daily wages, earning even less than the prescribed minimum wage. In the evening, when they finished their work, they would assemble in the courtyard and sing. My artistes and I lived around that courtyard. We used to rehearse there. Mine was a low-cost DDA house, which was allotted to me when I ceased to be a Rajya Sabha member.

I asked the women to sing, and it became a routine afterwards. Everybody was enthralled by their rhymes. Once I invited Sulochana Brahaspathi to my rehearsals. She heard these Ram-Naami singers. She was enchanted, quite stunned and thrilled. She said that they have the most primitive of voices. They used to change the intricate rhythm while singing in perfect melody without any instrumental music and used to sing for a long-long time. She said their song was very precious and full of musical richness.

I wanted to incorporate them in my work, which I could not do at that moment. They were migrants who had come to Delhi from all over Chhattisgarh. When their work in that area was over, they left, and I could not trace them afterwards. I missed the opportunity to use them in any play, since nothing I was working on was suitable then.

The Adivasis of Mandla, Bastar and Raigarh too, with whom I worked every now and again, are full of music and dance and rhythm and folklore. They are very creative people. At the end of the day, when they gathered, they would enact, in mime, the killing of the buffalo in a jungle. They would become the buffalo and the hunters as well. The Adivasis rear buffaloes, worship them, kill and eat them. This is at the core of their lives. The Bison is their deity. The horns of a bison have many uses for them. They hunt the bison, with respect, awe and reverence. And of course, they hunt for their personal consumption, not for commercial purposes or to destroy.

You have been closely associated with Chhattisgarh. As a creative person, you have drawn the common labourer and peasant into theatre’s fold. What attracted you to them? Tell us about your experiences.

In those days, at Narayanpur, when Bada Dev and other deities are worshiped on a market day, the men and women danced through the day and the night. They thronged from all over, crowding the maidan. Cultivating a rhythm with their drums, they sang and danced with bells on their waist. The women used an iron rod, which when struck, went ’CHHANN’. The men played the drums. Together, they sang and danced.

In the plains of Chhattisgarh, everybody sings. They do not do anything without singing. Whether it is breaking stones or building a road or weeding the crop or sowing or reaping — all the time there will be a song with a chorus. This is also so in the celebrations of ‘Ram Saptah’. Rajnandgaon town pulsates and vibrates with the songs of the women for a full week. They carry the ‘jyoth’ (the lighted lamps) on their heads to the temple of Gauri-Gaura (Parvati-Shankar) and offer prayers. I used several of their songs with changing rhythms in Gaon ko Nav Sasural – Mor Nav Damad.

These women are not the theatre girls — just ordinary people, housewives. One of them was an usher in a cinema hall and the other sold seasonal fruits. They were Scheduled Castes and were very creative. Their song fit a pattern which I gave them in the Naacha form of theatre. Most of those I chose were either illiterate or semi-literate or dropouts. I deliberately rejected the somewhat educated ones. This is because I strongly feel that schooling cramps the style and the personality, inhibits singing and creativity, and the ability to vocalize and to dance with abandon —all of which they all possessed so long they were not schooled.

In your opinion, how rich is the creativity of the labourers?

Labourers, pouring into our cities, from all over the tribal and folk areas are uneducated, but have strong cultural roots. They know their flora and fauna, their cuisine, how to cook and how to eat. They know their customary wear. They know their architecture. They can build their huts and know to live there very neatly. They know their shastras, epics such as Mahabarata and Ramayana. They know their ballads such as Lorik-Chanda, which itself is a great creation translated in almost all languages. In some places, it is called Lorikayan, in some it is Chandaini. So the working class of our country, on the whole, is very cultured.

On the other hand, the middleclass, educated as they are, are deprived of their own culture. This all happened to them because of our schools which made them narrow and confined. Creativity, therefore, is not confined to the so-called educated elites. The simple, working class people also have it. In fact, it is more natural for them and is nurtured by life itself.

You are saying that the entire labour force that comes to urban areas are tribals and village folks. How different are they from the workers in these areas?

Initially, there is no difference between peasants and workers. Even in Mumbai, I noticed mill workers singing Marathi or Konkani folk songs. They sing Gujarati and Bhojpuri folk, as well. They carried their culture with them. It might become different for the second or third generations after them.

You have worked with Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) among the mill workers in Mumbai. Has the creativity of the rural and tribal labour found expression there?

The coolies call the air-conditioned coaches in trains Thandi Gaadi. These words you may not find in any dictionary, but they construct a new vocabulary.

Let me give you one example. There was a boy worker who wrote a short poem purely in Mumbaia language. Kishan Chander brought him to a Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) meeting, and asked him to read. It was a marvelous experience to listen to him. Maulvi Abdul Haque published the Mumbaia worker’s poem in his magazine in Urdu. Maulvi Shahib, an emancipated scholarly man, discussed the poem and said that the boy’s poem had all the essentials and values of a ghazal.

As a creative person, what aspects of labour attract you?

Every aspect. I find them exceedingly interesting while at work. They work hard all the time, maintaining their dignity, and are very beautiful and creative.

Would you give some examples in which you have taken your theatre to the workers?

Yes. We used to go to the chawls, at the mill gates, with our plays. There was a play Shantidoot Kamgar, which I conceived with Deena Pathak. We adopted a technique from the Red Army in those days. They went to restaurants or other crowded places and created noisy scenes by quarrelling. This would attract the people there, and then someone would get up on the table and start delivering a speech, asking them to join the Red Army to carry on the revolution.

Exactly in the same manner, Deena and others used to quarrel at the mill gates. People would gather, trying to understand what was happening. I would, then, get up on a table and start delivering a prepared speech about the demands of the workers for a hike in their wages, about their rights and about world peace.

Besides this, we used to perform in crowded chawls, where workers lived in multi-storey buildings on all the floors in single rooms. They used to watch us perform from their rooms. The chawl was our amphitheatre in those days!

We used to do the same thing at Lal Bagh and other maidans where our leaders such as S.A. Dange, P.C. Joshi and others were scheduled to address public meetings. Shahir Amar Sheikh, Shailendra, Anna Bhan Sathe and many others performed songs, dances, skits, etc., in all such meetings. They all came from the peasant class, working class. They entertained the people with their cultural ethos and forms of creativity as well as paved the way for their leaders. We used all folk and tribal art forms — for a political purpose, of course.

What about the Indian theatre in general? Has it given the creative prowess of the workers its due? In Hindi theatre especially, it seems to me that we have made very little use of it.

Yes. It is less in Hindi speaking areas, but has a powerful base in south Indian languages. Girish Karnad and others have done great work in this direction. I talked about this at the National School of Drama with Alkazi. He missed the point however. It was not about labourers as such but about the leaders of landless labourers and peasants. Of course, he broke many taboos. I myself have incorporated labourers as a working class in my theatre at very few points. Gaon ko nav…, as you have noticed, and Hirma ki amar kahani. However, Hirma… was more about tribal system, prevailing in Bastar, which faced political vendetta at that time.

How was the impact of your work, during your IPTA days, on labour in Mumbai?

It is difficult to assess. A large number of people — as many as could assemble — used to gather around us during the performances. There are three types of audiences that we experience in each performance. One is Surmast who will not tolerate anything that is non-melodious. The other is Taalmast, who can identify the disturbed rhythm at once. The greatest one is always the Haalmast, who does not mind the occasional faultier in the melody or rhythm and encourages one to continue performing for a long-long time still one is exhausted. I like the third category of mast people, who always keep coming to my theatre.