Malcom X

Hindi drama 'Shakuntala', based on classical Sanskrit play Abhijnanshakunkalam by Kalidasa.

A United Television production in association with National Centre for Performing Arts, Sangeet Natak Academy and Goa Hindu Association.

Directed by Vijay Mehta.

Cast:

Shakuntala - Archana Joglekar

Dushyanta - Mohan Bharali

Kanva - Udhra Mahariskhar

Choreographer - Asha Joglekar

Set and costume design - D.G Godse.

Technical collaboration - Western Outdoor Pvt. Ltd.

The story of Shakuntala is one of the most popular tales in Hindu tradition and probably the most widely enacted of Kalidasa's plays. The central figure of Shakuntala, is celebrated even in the present day as epitomizing the virtues of the traditional Indian woman. The original Sanskrit play has been translated in many different regional languages in India (with twenty five translation works only in Malyalam), and adapted in different ways in various theatre performances. Even outside India, this classical play has inspired many foreign directors. Italian Franco Alfano composed an opera named La leggenda di Sakuntala-'The legend of Shakuntala' in 1921. A Norwegian musician, Amethystium wrote a song called 'Garden of Shakuntala'. The first English translation of the play was made in 1789 by Sir William Jones,and later in 1855 by Sir Monier Williams and the most recent translation is by Arthur W. Ryder,1914.

The present theatre performance discussed in the essay is a Hindi adaptation of the Sanskrit play by Kalidasa, written and directed by Vijay Mehta. As a modern day performance of a classical text, the play allows the modern viewer to have a 'dialogue' or engagement with the traditional values and norms of ancient Hindu culture. It consciously underplays the constant tension between the traditional and the modern - the past and the present- for eg the contrast between traditional costumes and sets and the contemporary dialect, and folk elements of the modern adaptation (folk music and dance). The audience is given a blend of both the traditional and the contemporary on the

one hand but the atmosphere of the past culture is clearly evoked through the costumes, sets .

The anachronistic relationship resulting in cultural clash between the present day viewer and the past text may well characterise all modern adaptations of ancient texts, but the Shakuntala is significantly different in this sense, i.e. in the way in which the modern viewer engages with the play and 'relates' to the characters, the traditional customs, the social mores, the ethical values of a past culture -for here instead of experiencing a sense of cultural alienation, the viewer is actually able to 'identify' with the situation. The viewer in this case is not an 'objective' spectator as may be in the case of other traditional plays, but a 'subjective' one for he/she is still a subject of the social situation depicted in the play and which has continued to the present day.

The play provides ample scope to compare the times and conditions of two periods of a vast temporal gap- the ancient and modern. The issue here is in problematising the evolution of the modern from the ancient in relation to the question of 'social development' and 'modernization', especially by looking at the role of the woman in the Indian society -in the past and the present, and raising questions about her unchanging identity, when everything else has undergone change through the process of historical evolution. What are the implications of this problematic relationship of - 'anachronistic identification' which the modern spectator has with this ancient play? It is clear that this identification occurs mainly because the modern spectator's conception of the 'Indian woman' is the same as in the ancient time. Now as to the implications of this strange identification, to me it seems that it is indicative of the orthodox nature of Hindu society with regard to the woman sex and the society's particular resistance to bringing about any change in the condition of women and her essential identity in society. While immense changes have occurred over the many years through social churning and modern society has bypassed many of the ethical, social and political values of its ancient history, yet it has remained largely regressive in terms of the development and progress of the woman.

Now three things may be said about the woman's identity. Firstly it is largely 'sexualized' - by seeing woman as the object of man's desire. Secondly, her sexual communion with man is important as she must continue his race, thus her role as the progenitor. Thirdly, as an extension of the first two, it may be said that the woman's identity is not only both derivative and secondary to the male identity, but is also constructed by a generically patriarchal order. The woman's voice or agency in the ancient times was absent and in the modern society is consciously suppressed.

In the light of the present play, Sakuntala's character on a transcendental level may be seen as representing the 'generic woman identity' and experiencing the eternal 'woman crises'. Throughout the play she is the object of male gaze- and her character is portrayed from a male point of view-Dushyanta, Kanva, the hermits who escort her to the palace. Also Shakuntala is the construction of a 'chavinistic', patriarchal social order, and she grows up under strict patriarchal supervision into the 'coy, submissive, and innocent' - fitting the male fetishized image of the 'perfect woman'. The second scene, when Dushyanta sees Shakuntala for the first time, is a perfect example of fetishisation by

'male gaze' which reduces the identity of the woman to her sexuality and physicality. Dushyanta's description of Shakuntala when he sees her for the first time is highly erotic.Right from the first meeting the King is driven by a desire to establish physical communion with Shakuntala. The King's obsession to attain Shakuntala results in him insisting upon 'marriage' without a proper ceremony and although he justifies the act here to satisfy his own sexual