LESSONS FROM TUGHLAQ
What a revival of playwright Girish Karnad’s ’60s classic tragicomedy says about power and its delivery, aspiration and authoritarianism
In the mid-’60s, Girish Karnad was a 22 year-old playwright in search of a subject. He had just completed writing about the whims of a king (Yayati) when he came upon the statement of a critic dissing existing Kannada plays as costume drama. Karnad decided to rise to the challenge. His ‘Tughlaq’ is a theatrical representation strong in rhetoric, of the 14th century king who destabilised his own kingdom; marched his people from the north to the west to set up a new capital and marched them back; went on a killing spree; struck coins in one metal and then another – all in the name of good governance. Watching a powerful man crack up, whenever it occurs, is a bad time in history. It’s great for art though.
Tughlaq was first staged in Urdu in 1966 as part of a National School of Drama (NSD) student production directed by actor Om Shivpuri, then a student. Its more famous outing was Ebrahim Alkazi’s grand set-piece at the Purana Qila, Delhi, in 1972; veteran actor Mano- har Singh played the lead.
A revival of the play in Delhi this weekend comes at an interesting point when books are questioning older books about dead rulers with bad press – such as Aurangzeb – and the appropriate way to look at figures of history. So, was Muhummad bin Tughlaq mad or brilliant? Was he a visionary or an insecure politician? Were his projects an expression of madness or driven by political calculation? For Karnad, the urgent question is, whether the play is still contemporary.
“Written in the ’60s, everyone latched on to UR Ananthamurthy’s comment of it being a critique of Nehruvian socialism,” says the actor-playwright. “The point about a play is that it cannot simply be about its own time. Tughlaq is not just about Nehru. There are lines in the play when two guards talk to each other and one of them says ‘Oh, this is such a strong fort!’ The other guard doesn’t agree. He says ‘This fort will crumble due its inner weaknesses.’ An ’80s’ audience watching it, interpreted it as the aftermath to Indira Gandhi’s assassination… Every audience interprets a play according to his own times. The question is whether the audience will connect it to Modi….”
WHEN CURTAINS GO UP
K Madavane is the director of Tughlaq that will be staged this weekend. “He is a meticulous planner. The throne-on-wheels he helped create is not a static piece of furniture, its movement indicates a shift of capital,” says Veena Soorma of the Shri Ram Centre of Performing Arts (SRCPA).
The stage is bare except for a huge wooden throne atop a pyramid whose base is made up of stairs. Tughlaq climbs these stairs to issue his orders; his minions positioned at various levels on the staircase fight it out for his attention. The courtier (Najeeb), who is all hot air, grand postures and bad advice, is the one who has the king’s ears.
Tughlaq’s subjects also make hay feeding into his fickle impulses to be seen as inclusive. Aziz, a citizen, for example, takes on the identity of a Brahmin to benefit from the king’s generosity to his Hindu subjects.
Tughlaq’s motivations were all right but he was quite impulsive. He got the people packing to shift his capital. Everyone hated the idea. SANDEEP SINGH, chief, Shri Ram Centre of Performing Arts Repertory
A COMPLEX MAN
There were three things that were fighting for Tughlaq’s soul, says Sandeep Singh, the Shri Ram Centre repertory chief. He quotes from the play to make his point: “Khuda ki azmaat (Allah’s greatness), riyaya ki bhalayi ka khwaab (the dream for the good of the people), aur zaati khwaishey (my personal desires) – jab teeno mein kashmakash ho rahi ho toh mujhey soney ka waqt kahan hai…”
Veteran actor Ayaz Khan who is playing Tughlaq for the sixth time in his career, says the character is open to various readings. Tughlaq’s mistakes, he says, “unlike today’s leaders, were driven by a higher motive. He was not all about power. He thought he was building a new world. He was rash and driven by idealism. To me, he is a positive character. Even if he did badly, he was a brilliant failure. ”