Building a portrait of Ebrahim Alkazi
Amal Allana balances warmth with objectivity in this book about her father, the polymath Ebrahim Alkazi
Ebrahim Alkazi is known to most as an institution builder and a mentor with a larger-than-life persona, who changed the lexicon of Indian theatre. He brought a unique style of modernism to the arts, refusing to view scenography, photography and theatre in silos. Rather, he believed in a cross-pollination of mediums, ideas and practices as could be seen in the National School of Drama—the first professionally oriented theatre institutions in the country—and later in the establishment of visual arts institutions such as Art Heritage and the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts in New Delhi, Centre for International Contemporary Art and Sepia International in New York.
A new book, Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding
Time Captive, authored by his daughter and veteran theatre practitioner, Amal Allana, looks at all of this. But it goes beyond just looking at the colossus that Alkazi was. The pages of the book have a “behind-the-scenes” flavour, allowing the reader to get a glimpse of how Alkazi, who hailed from an Arab family, evolved into the modernist that he was. The narrative alternates between personal and objective, with Allana never letting her close association with her father blindside her.
It won’t be wrong to say that the book is not just about Alkazi. Rather, it is a story about the development of the arts in postindependence India, as viewed through the lens of his life. One also meets significant personalities such as F.N. Souza and Sultan “Bobby” Padamsee, who had an impact on both Alkazi and the culture scene in India.
In an interview with Lounge, Allana reflects on the process of putting the book together and on Alkazi’s philosophy of modernism. Edited excerpts:
When the subject of a book is someone this close to you, how challenging is it to write about him?
Yes, it is challenging. On the one hand, there is a surfeit of material that one has accumulated, observed or simply imbibed over the years about the person. But one cannot use this simply because one has been privy to their private life. The act of writing requires a re-examining of one’s entrenched observations.
Also, in the instance of this book, I had decided to write chapters/sequences as if they were actually happening, and therefore gave my father and the other character “dialogues”. This compelled one to substantiate the use of situations, dialogues, responses—and locate evidence that these things were actually said or done in order to give the biography credibility. So, despite the fact that I knew my father, and was familiar with his thoughts, vocabulary, and responses, there was a fair amount of archival research that one did. How does the personal meet the public in the book?
Being a public personality, the image of Alkazi in the public imagination has tended to be rather uni-dimensional. Adjectives such as “authoritative”, “demanding”, “meticulous”, “disciplined”, and “unrelenting” have generally been used to describe him, thus making him even more untouchable and remote.
One of the ideas of writing this book was to dispel such cliched notions and present a more human and vulnerable person— one who, though brilliant in many ways, suffered several setbacks, was often defeated by circumstances. He was a person, who was at times, blind to his own shortcomings. As a daughter, while I was privy to those setbacks, I also was witness to his ability to pull himself up by the bootstraps and bounce back with energy and a renewed sense of purpose. Hopefully my approach has resulted in a more nuanced delineation of his character.
Was the writing of the book cathartic in some ways?
Cathartic? I don’t know yet. But there were several instances when I was unable to narrate painful moments. There were instances when I stopped writing for days. However, yes, there were revelations. One of my major interests in writing this book was to locate the foundations of Alkazi’s world view. Where did Alkazi’s ideas on art arrive from? Secondly, I needed to discover the source ideas on which he developed his own brand of theatre pedagogy.
Interested in both theatre and the visual arts, my father had, in fact, gone to the UK to join art school. Finding instruction inadequate at two art schools, he said, “I shall pursue my art studies on my own and concentrate on theatre studies at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art).” With no further leads as to what kind of art he pursued during this time, it came as a total revelation for me to literally discover an old trunk, 65 years later, with 100 of his paintings and drawings done in that period. They had been carefully preserved, wrapped in an old bedcover and stowed away by my mother.
Could you elaborate further on the art that he created?
These drawings by Alkazi were absolutely extraordinary as they showed the impact of both African and Oceanic primitive art on his creativity. That became the clue for me to trace the link to exhibitions that Alkazi might have visited in London at a new institution like the International Centre for the Arts (ICA), established by Herbert Read and Roland Penrose, where their foundational exhibition, 40,000
Years Of Modern Art, connected modern art to that of the primitive times. Alkazi’s ideas on the history and genealogy of modernism, as well as his ideas on curation and exhibition design took root, and developed, as a result of such encounters. There were more instances when one thing led to another, making the compiling of this material an exciting process— like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. You mention that there is surprisingly little material available about the life of a polymath of his stature.
Why is that?
I think many were intimidated by the range of material with which Alkazi worked. The modernist art, which he was creating in both theatre and painting, had their sources in multiple cultures as well as mediums. It was a complex interwoven cultural mix that was perhaps difficult for “drama critics” or “art critics” to describe. It is only in the last 10 years that art forms, which are culturally diverse and use multiple mediums, are critiqued with some clarity. Alkazi was pursuing his very own brand of modernity in Indian theatre, being among one of the first few practitioners to attempt such an approach. This was one of the important reasons for me to uncover Alkazi’s sources of inspiration, so that his work would become more approachable.
What was his style of modernism?
Modernity for Alkazi was not an “ism” or a style. It was an approach—a new way of looking at the world in relative and not absolute terms. He firmly believed in the constant need to re-evaluate one’s ideas, actions and thoughts. To be modern was to be contemporary—it was to be open, it was a question of renewal and rebirth. How did his photography collection showcase his myriad interests, and how significant is it to understand the evolution of art and culture in postindependence India?
In the early 1950s, Alkazi showed an interest in modernity per se by mounting a series of exhibitions in Bombay, which he called This Is Modern Art. It covered works from the impressionists to cubists like (Pablo) Picasso. In later years, Alkazi returned to re-examine modernity, but this time his emphasis was on uncovering the history and evolution of Indian modernism. By systematically going back to a watershed moment like the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Alkazi looked at and studied the impact of Western art on Indian artisans. A little later, he discovered a wealth of material of British and Indian photographers, from the 1850s onwards. This excited him. To him, photography was not just a new “art” form that Indians took to as new technology arrived in India. But he began to understand it as a means of domination, both commercial as well as an instrument of governance used by the British authorities to control its subjects. Art in this instance was being used as a political tool in colonising a people. All these aspects of art, not just its aesthetics, were of growing interest to Alkazi.
The book goes beyond just examining Alkazi as a theatre colossus. The ‘behind-thescenes’ flavour gives a glimpse of how he evolved into a modernist