When Kotrappa Hiremagadi was getting ready to go on stage on the night of July 3, Sunday, he was a worried man for many reasons. The theatre actor, portraying a policeman, wondered whether the stage space was big enough, and if one of the actors who had lost her voice during the rehearsals would be loud enough. “It was a frenzy backstage, but we were getting through the performance. We were already into the last 30 minutes of the play and beginning to lay out the final act. That is when the phone rang,” says Kotrappa.
The phone call was from the organiser, insisting that his team halt the play since it was ‘controversial’. “I told them I was about to go on stage and that the discussion about the play, whatever it may be, can wait till the end of the performance,” says Kotrappa. But before he could react, three members of the Bajrang Dal, a Hindutva group, walked on to the stage and took away the microphone from the performers. To Kotrappa’s horror, the disruptors then forced the 150-strong audience to leave the hall, taking objection to Muslim characters and an interfaith marriage portrayed in the play. “They shouted ‘Bolo Bharat Mata Ki’ and asked the crowd to join in. They said that a play with Muslim characters cannot be staged in this hall,” Kotrappa recalls.
The incident, which took place in Shivamogga’s Anavatti village on July 3, is now making headlines across Karnataka, drawing criticism from prominent theatre personalities and intellectuals alike. The play, Jotegiruvanu Chandira, was being staged by Rangabelaku, a Shivamogga-based theatre group at the Veerashaiva Kalyana Mandira in Anavatti. The theatre group was invited by the Kannada Sahitya Parishat, Karnataka Janapada Parishat, and Kannada Samskruthika Vedike in Anavatti hobli to perform the play. But Bajrang Dal members, led by Sridhar Achar, took objection to the play and barged into the hall to disrupt it.
Kotrappa, 52, a school headmaster and a veteran artiste, had never experienced the dejection of having a play disrupted before, let alone for a reason like this. “The play tells a story of coexistence. How could they disrupt it just like that,” he asks.
The play Jothegiruvanu Chandira, penned by well known lyricist and writer Jayant Kaikini, is a Kannada adaptation of Joseph Stein’s ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, which is set in Russia in the early 1900s and focuses on a Jewish milkman coping with the strong-willed actions of his daughters, who wish to marry for love. The book was also adapted to a Broadway musical and a film of the same name.
The Kannada adaptation places the same characters in post-Independent India, focusing on a Muslim bakery owner Bade Miyan in the backdrop of partition and migration. In trying to marry off his daughters, Bade Miyan copes with his daughters’ suitors who are successively less agreeable. He manages to stay free of outside influences and allows each of his daughters to marry her respective suitor, with the youngest daughter Saira opting for an interfaith marriage. This is even as Bade Miyan is forced to leave his home and migrate due to the partition.
Kotrappa, a senior member of the Rangabelaku team, first watched a performance of Jothegiruvanu Chandira in 1997 when it was performed at the Ninasam, a unique cultural institution based in Heggodu village of Shivamogga known for its contributions in the fields of theatre, films and publishing. “I cried when I watched the play performed for the first time. Even now, throughout the 15 days of rehearsals, the actors were crying during the performances. It is a play that evokes emotion,” says Kotrappa, adding that the play essentially spreads the message of communal harmony. “It talks of a man who resists society’s influences and allows his daughters the freedom to marry who they want. The fact that communal feelings are common to the point where plays like this are stopped is testament to the times we live in,” he says.
The play has been staged several times over the past two decades, including by convicts in the Mysuru jail as directed by Hulugappa Kattimani, a theatre practitioner at Rangayana in Mysuru. It was staged as recently as on June 16 in Shivamogga city.
Though the artistes from Rangabelaku did not approach the police with a complaint, the police’s inaction in the case has sparked widespread condemnation. Though the police arrived at the hall after the play was disrupted by Hindutva vigilantes, no further action was taken, even though the organisers had taken permission to stage the play.
The Havyasi Rangakalavidara Okkoota, an artiste collective, demanded that the state government take strict action against the vigilantes who stopped the play. “This is a dark day for democracy. The act of disrupting a play on-stage is an attack on the freedom of expression. The threat that they would push the artistes off the stage if they do not stop the play is a criminal act,” the collective said in a memorandum submitted to the Shivamogga District Commissioner.
“There are no words to express the anguish one feels on learning that the audience of 150-odd people in the auditorium did not protest against the stopping of the performance that was under way,” noted theatre personality Raghunandana S told TNM. “The Department of Kannada and Culture, the Karnataka Nataka Academy, and the Anavatti unit of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat that had sponsored the performance are all answerable to the people of Karnataka for not taking action against the fascist thugs, even after four days since the incident,” he said.
He urged the Veerashaiva Mahasabha to organise more performances of the play, since Bajrang Dal activists had disrupted the play invoking the community’s name. Veerashaivas are a Shaivite community well represented in Sangh parivar outfits in Karnataka.
Prominent theatre group Samudaya Karnataka and theatre activist Prasanna Heggodu were among the others who condemned the disruption of the play. The incident comes months after the Bajrang Dal in Shivamogga banned Muslim traders from the popular Marikamba fair in the district, and mandated all the shops to place a saffron flag on the stall. The ban on Muslim traders was announced in the wake of the murder of Bajrang Dal member Harsha Jingade from Shivamogga in February.