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For the British government, the publication and translation of Nil Darpan

into English increased suspicion of vernacular drama. Because of the


language
barrier, authorities feared they overlooked information regarding subversive
aspects of dramatic productions. The increasing production of radical
dramas by 1875 and the reaction of the press from various sections of the
Bengali populace became immensely threatening to the rulers, who began
pursuing a policy of caution with respect to dramatic productions. Nil Darpan
thus catalyzed a policy of dramatic censorship that was to become another
legal mechanism of imperial control over the cultural life of the colony.
To the native intelligentsia, Nil Darpan became
exemplary of the role that drama could play in the fight against colonial
rule. Consequently, following Nil Darpan, political developments in India
became the subject of numerous plays . Even the polemical text of Nil
Darpan began to be performed on the public stage in the 1870s, largely as a
way of portraying the excesses of the indigo planters and to elicit responses
from the public to demand the rights of indigo laborers.
As imperialism increased in scope, resistance on the stage mounted and
the number of political plays dealing with colonial oppression increased.
Dramatists such as Sisir Kumar Ghose, Manmohan Bose, and Girish Chandra
Ghosh, among others, began to take a keen interest in the building up of
national theaters for the express purpose of awakening a sense of
nationalism
and patriotism. Their efforts resulted in the establishment of the Great
National Theatre in Calcutta. In 1875 , nationalist drama moved beyond the
geographical boundaries of Bengal when the Great National Theatre toured
Agra, Mathura, Vrindavan, Lucknow, and Delhi with Nil Darpan as part of

its repertoire. In this way, the ideological conflict among the indigo
capitalists,
the government, and the missionaries not only revealed the connections
of law, colonization, and theater; it brought out an overt questioning
of colonial policies and initiated a new phase in the life of the stage in India.

Gaekwar Durpan and Chakar Durpan are two notable anticolonial plays that
followed Nil Darpan.83 Both plays were written in the wake of exploitative
circumstances and lashed out against British policies in India.
With the exploitation of the tea laborers
as its central focus, Chakar Durpan exposed the legal malpractices by the
rulers and the complete subordination of the laborers in the process involving
the trade, consumption, and production of tea.
The play took on a special significance in drawing the critical attention of
the native press, which responded by pointing out that " [p] ossibly the
oppressions actually practiced on the labourers are [more] severe than these
depicted in the 'Chakar Durpan
Gaekwar Durpan attacked the political process of British expansion in the
late nineteenth century through the gradual annexation of the princely
states to the empire
In its dramatization of the incident, Gaekwar Durpan exposed the
malpractices
of planting false courtroom evidence, the framing of witnesses, the
power exercised by the British army, and the ways in which the British pitted
natives against each other.

Such representation of the humiliating processes of colonial subjugation


through the public forum of the stage exhibits a firm nationalist commitment
toward dramatizing concerns that reveal the contradictions between the
colonial government's claims about its "civilizing mission" and its practices.93
Presenting the colonial power in a position clearly oppositional to the
interests of the ruled, Gaekwar Durpan and Chakar Durpan show the
conditions
that forced natives into subordination. Unlike the ambiguities toward
imperial rule in Nil Darpan, the attitudes toward the rulers are now clearly
antagonistic.
To the rulers these plays represented the gradual consolidation of an
oppositional current in the realm of theater. Alarmed by the two plays at a
time when British justice was being questioned, the lieutenant-governor of
Bengal, Sir Richard Temple, urged the immediate passage of the Censorship
Act, expressing his fears that it would be "bad and unwise to permit the
British name to be publicly vilified, evening after evening, in the presence of
a susceptible, quick-witted and impressionable race like the Bengallees ."94
In August 1875, Lord Northbrooke, along with a number of officials ,
dispatched
a letter to the India Office in London explaining the necessity of the
passage of legislation enabling the prohibition of "theatrical representation,
which in their opinion may be prejudicial to the public interests." Among
others, they listed the following reason:
A few months ago our attention was directed to a Native play called
the Chakar Durpan or "The Mirror of Tea Planting," which had been
published in Calcutta. This work contains a scandalous libel on the
tea planters in Assam, and if represented on the stage would be calculated

to excite feelings of personal hostility against them. Yet the Government


have no power to prohibit its representation. The circumstances
connected with the recent trial of the Gaekwar of Baroda have
been dramatised and represented in Calcutta ... it is obvious that at a
time of political excitement representations of this class might give
rise to serious consequences. 96
Following approval from the marquis of Salisbury, the secretary of state for
India introduced the proposed bill regarding theatrical performances in the
Legislative Department97 and circulated the same among all the provincial
governments of the subcontinent (including British Burma) . After receiving
a unanimously favorable response from the various local and provincial
governments, the British India government proposed to the secretary of
state for India "to proceed with the Bill and pass it at Calcutta."98
Aware of the Hindu fetishization of a woman's "honor," the authorities
used such protests to justify the need for censoring plays . To downplay the
reality of sexual atrocities at the plantations as represented in the plays-a
reality that exposed a most ugly side of colonial rule-the rulers launched
into a rhetoric of "respectability," "honor," and "morality," banning a number
of plays on the pretext that the women in the plays received bad treatment.
Images of white men assaulting women, they claimed, were detrimental
to Hindu women.

The underlying motive for banning the plays was not to protect Indian
women but to suppress dissent. Nonetheless, intertwining the rhetoric of
morality with the issue of gender enabled authorities to legitimize colonial
rule. By showing sympathy for Hindu women, British rulers reinforced their

position that the males in Indian society were too "effeminate" to take care
of their women, and that if the Hindu men were unfit to take care of their
women, then the "civilized" Europeans would take care of them. In this
way, they validated their reasons for censoring native drama and made the
nationalist playwrights seem like betrayers of their own women. The
rhetoric of obscenity and morality for Hindu women was also strategic, as it
won the rulers the sympathy and support of the conservative Brahman
element
on whom, argues Uma Chakravarty, they heavily relied. Implementing
policy against drama on the pretext of (mis) representation of women,
therefore,
became a strategic means of preventing rising disaffection with colonial
rule
Despite the censors' approval of a number of plays for some time after 1876,
theaters saw a lull in political dramatic activity. 120 European attendance at
the theaters , police surveillance, and coercion of theater managers made it
difficult to present dramas that openly attacked colonial rule. This led to the
dwindling of the National Theatre. 121 At such a time, playwrights searched
for a drama that could elude censorship and at the same time disseminate
nationalist ideas . Because of its religiously affiliated characteristic, which
made it less susceptible to strict censorship measures, mythological drama
seemed quite appropriate for these purposes.
The genre would also have popular appeal at a time when revivalist Hinduism
recuperated mythological characters s
As a cultural phenomenon, therefore, mythological drama can be
seen as a vital and invigorating activity that challenged the political
machinery

and, on occasion, rendered futile its attempts to suppress drama. Its


celebrations
of mythological heroes and warriors and questioning of tyranny
and injustice through manipulation of dialogue and language that concealed
attacks on the British rulers , disseminated oppositional ideas to large and
varied audiences.

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