Mohan Rakesh, Modernism, and The Postcolonial Present

The South Central Modern Language Association
Mohan Rakesh, Modernism, and the Postcolonial Present

Author(s): Aparna Dharwadker
Source: South Central Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, Staging Modernism (Spring, 2008), pp. 136-162
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central Modern
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Mohan
andthePostcolonial
Present
Rakesh,
Modernism,
Aparna Dharwadker, University ofWisconsin-Madison
1. Geomodernism and the Indian-Language Playwright

The fin-de-siecle critical project of redefining the spatio-temporal
boundaries of modernism has recently gathered new momentum by
taking up the question of modernism's relation to colonialism and
postcolonialism.The formativeinfluenceof non-western aestheticand
culturalpractices(especially those belonging to colonized peoples) on
Euro-Americanmodernisms is a well-noted event in the histories of
modernliteratureandart.1But the reciprocalinfluenceof Euro-modernist theory and practice on post/colonial expressive forms is only now
beginning to receive attention.Some currentwork at the intersection
of modernistand postcolonial studies demonstratesboth the necessity
andthe difficultyof devising an adequatemethodologyfor dealingwith
"modernismat the margins,"and I will approachmy discussionof Mohan Rakesh- a late-twentieth-century
Indian-languagemodernistin the
theatre- by way of three seminal argumentsabout the reconfiguration
of modernism-as-subject.
Describing postcolonial writers'emulationof high modernistssuch
as T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats as "thegreat irony of the history of postcolonial literatures,"Simon Gikandinonethelessassertsthat
a convergenceof politicalandliteraryideologiesmark[s]a significantpartof the historyof modernismandpostcolonialism.
- I amtempted
Indeed,it is my contentionthatit wasprimarily
to say solely in thelanguageandstructure
of modernism
that
a postcolonialexperiencecameto be articulated
andimagined
in literaryform.The archiveof earlypostcolonialwritingin
andIndiais dominatedby anddefined
Africa,the Caribbean,
by writerswhosepoliticalor culturalprojectswereenabledby
modernismeven whenthe ideologiesof the latter,as was the
casewithEliot,wereatoddswiththeprojectof decolonization
. . . [W]ithoutmodernism,
as we knowit
postcolonialliterature
wouldperhapsnotexist.2
These are far-reachingclaims aboutthe centralityof modernismto postcolonial writing, and they call for a radicalrevision of the conventional
South CentralReview 25.1 (Spring2008): 136-162.
M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 137
chronology of Euro-Americanmodernism (circa 1890-1940 in most

accounts) because the non-westernarchive takes shape in the second
ratherthanfirsthalf of the twentiethcentury.As SusanFriedmanpoints
out, the traditionalperiodization"cutsoff the agencies of writers,artists,
philosophers,and otherculturalproducersin the emergentpostcolonial
world just as their new modernitiesare being formed,"which in turn
"deeplyaffects the definitionalprojectsof moderniststudies,producing
circularoverviewsof modernismthatreflectthe absenceof the very texts
thatwould transforman understandingof the field in general."3
The culturalspecificity of postcolonialmodernisms,moreover,does
not precludetheirmembershipin the transnationalnetworksthat make
possible the conceptualization of a global or planetary modernism.
Friedmanproposes "culturalparataxis"as a nonhierarchicalreading
strategyfor "examiningwritersfromdifferentnodalpointsof modernity,
recognizingthe heterogeneityandstratificationsof manycentersaround
the globe as well as the reciprocalinfluencesand culturalmimesis that
resultfromtransnationalculturaltrafficandinterculturalcontactzones."4
Similarly,LauraDoyle andLauraWinkielacknowledgethe significance
of modernisms,
of particulargeographiesin the creationandinterpretation
while also stressingthe "geoculturalconsciousness"that unexpectedly
connects artistsacross the divisions of space and time.
intermsof
inthisway- tothink,rather,
Toemplacemodernisms
- requiresa rethinking
of periodizamodernisms
interconnected
tion,genealogies,affiliations,andforms.To somedegree,this
itself.Theterm
estrangesthecategoryof modernism
rethinking
we callgeomodernisms,
breaksopen,intosomething
modernism
which signalsa locationalapproachto modernisms'engagementwithculturalandpoliticaldiscoursesof globalmodernity.
Therevelationof suchan approachis double.It unveilsboth
in "marginal"
texts and
experiments
unsuspected"modernist"
others
that
texts
and
these
between
correlations
unsuspected
or
more
conventional
more
either
postmodern.5
appear
Like some other recent accounts concerned primarily with western
locations, this reversionapproachesmodernismas an open-ended,still
continuingglobal process ratherthan as a circumscribedaesthetic supersededby postmodernism.
The space-clearinggestures developed in recent modernist studies
offer an enablingtheoreticaland interpretivecontext for my discussion
of MohanRakesh(1925-1972), the iconic post-independenceplaywright
in India'smajoritylanguage,Hindi, and one of India's leading twenti-
I38
SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW
eth centuryauthors,across the spectrumof genres and languages.As a

memberof the firstgenerationof Indian-languagewriterswhose careers
unfoldedafterpoliticalindependencein 1947, Rakeshexemplifiesmany
of the largerliterary,political, and culturalrelations(and ruptures)that
are seminalto any discussion of Indianmodernism- those between colonial and postcolonial modernities,indigenoustraditionsand western
influences,Indianlanguagesand English,bourgeois-romanticnationalism and ironic individualism,Left ideology and a skepticalhumanism,
nationalism and cosmopolitanism, center and periphery,village and
city. His conscious and unconscious self-fashioning as a postcolonial
modernistappearsin the wide range of literaryand "personal"genres
he practiced,including short stories, novels, plays, essays, interviews,
conversations,reviews, diaries,andletters.In the specific case of drama,
Rakesh's three full-length plays show a radical sensibility working
throughthe matterof the remotehistoricalpast as well as the immediate
present.Ashadhka ek din (A Day in EarlyAutumn, 1958), andLahron
ke rajhans(The Royal Swans on the Waves, 1963) place theirhistorical
protagonists- the canonical fifth century Sanskritpoet Kalidasa and
the Buddha's stepbrotherNand, respectively-- in largely invented actions thatunderscorethe intensely humandramaof separationand loss
elided in the metanarrativesof history.The thirdplay,Adheadhure(The
Unfinished, 1969) returnsto the postcolonial urbanpresent to portray
the collapse of a middle-class family unable to cope with its declining
materialcircumstancesand fracturedrelationships.All three plays are
establishedclassics of post-independencetheatre,kept in constantcirculation as texts and performancesin the original Hindi, as well as in
multipleIndian-languagetranslations.Yet none is currentlyavailablein
an acceptableEnglish translation,in India or elsewhere, and Rakeshis
effectively absentfromthe mapof contemporary"world"theatre.While
in Hindi he continues at the center of a flourishingindustryof posthumous publication,scholarship,and criticism,the commentaryon him in
Englishremainslargelyjournalistic,andreadersin the Westhave access
to only a handfulof scholarlyconsiderationsof his work.6
Rakesh is therefore a pristine subject for modernist recovery, one
whose oeuvre offers an opportunity to uncover that "language and
structureof modernism"in which, accordingto Gikandi,"apostcolonial
experiencecame to be articulatedandimaginedin literaryform."7In the
following section, I considerthe concepts of modernityandmodernism
as they appearat the levels of taxonomy,theory,and practicein Indian
literatureand cultureafterthe mid-nineteenthcentury,providinga conceptualframeworkfor successive generationsof pre- andpost-indepen-
dencewriters.I thenmove to a discussionof the modernistpositionsthat

appearin Rakesh's theory and criticism over the course of his career,
especially in his argumentsabout creativity,authorship,form, content,
and language.In the final section, I take up Adhe adhureas a dramaof
urbandysfunctionwhich combines realism with several structuralinnovationsto accommodatethe psychodramaof home and family- the
privilegednarrativeof realismin modernwesterntheatre- to the Indian
metropolis.
To be analyzed without misrepresentationand fallacy, however,
Rakesh's postcolonial, Indian-languagetheatricalmodernismrequires
some correctivesbeyondthose offeredby the transnationalperspectives
of currentscholarship.Even as the boundariesof modernismhave expandedin time and space, theoristsand critics situatedin the American
academy (whatevertheir culturesof origin) have given overwhelming
priorityto the Europeanlanguages(especiallyEnglish)as the connective
links between western and non-westernculturalproduction,and to the
genre of prose fiction as the privileged vehicle of a global modernity.
In the collection Geomodernisms,for instance,only two of the sixteen
essays- Ken Seigneurie'sdiscussionof Lebanesenovels in Arabic,and
New Cinema- dealwith
Sung-shengYvonneChang'sof Taiwan-Chinese
the
has
dramaticperformance
none
of
essays
non-Europhonematerials;
as its mainfocus. SusanFriedman'ssuperbparatacticreadingjuxtaposes
novels fromtwo very differentplaces andmomentsin the twentiethcentury- E. M. Forster'sA Passage to India (1924) and ArundhatiRoy's
The God of Small Things (1996)- to explore "some unexpected lines
of affiliationand culturalmimesis,"with the task of comparisonclearly
facilitatedby the authors'commonmediumof English. Similarly,Ariela
Freedmanlocatesthe "Gangesside of modernism"in Indiain the photographyof RaghubirSingh (dispensingwith languagealtogether)and the
Anglophonefiction of Amitav Ghosh.8The same predispositionsappear
in the broaderfield of postcolonialcriticism:Simon Gikandi,Tejumola
Olaniyan,JahanRamazani,RosemaryMarangolyGeorge, and Fawzia
Afzal-Khanare among the diasporiccritics in the American academy
whose studiesof modern/istAfrican,Caribbean,andIndianwritingdeal
principally,if not exclusively, with Anglophone materials;Olaniyanis
also the only scholarconcernedwith theatreto any notable extent.9
Froma methodologicalstandpoint,the simultaneouslyinclusive and
exclusive logic of revisionaryapproachesis perhapsclearestin Rebecca
Walkowitz'sCosmopolitanStyle:ModernismBeyondtheNation (2006),
which delineates a traditionof British literarymodernism extending
from the novels of Joseph Conrad,JamesJoyce, and VirginiaWoolf at
140
the beginningof the twentiethcenturyto those of W. G. Sebald,Salman

Rushdie, and Kazuo Ishiguroat the end, on the premisethatthe earlier
group of writersdeveloped a "specificrepertoireof literarystrategies"
thatwere transformedby writersof the latergroup.Walkowitztherefore
of Englishlitconsidersthe late-twentieth-century
"'internationalization
erature'. . . not only as an expansionof places, actors,andeven languages
but also as an extension of modernistimpulses and practices"which
saves modernismfrombeing restrictedto "a single historicalperiod(the
earlytwentiethcentury)or to a single globalorientation('Europe'or 'the
West')."10But her focus remainson English and England:althoughher
reading effectively superimposesthe literaryproductsof postcolonial
"British"
migrancyand diasporaonto the map of late-twentieth-century
literature,the migrantauthorsshe considersreconfiguremodernismby
arrivingin the post-imperialmetropolisand embracingits language.To
contendfully with the postcolonyin all its multifacetedcomplexity,then,
moderniststudiesneed a fourfoldreorientation:of chronology,fromthe
early to the late twentiethcentury;of location, from the West to Africa,
Asia, and the Caribbean;of language, from the global marketplaceof
Europhone/Englishwriting to the less visible, but no less significant
field of non-Europeanlanguages drawn into the orbit of modernity;
and of genre, from prose fiction, non-fiction,and poetry to theatreand
performance.
For such a shift to be meaningful,however,we have to dispensewith
two interrelatedassumptionsthatare especially misguidedin relationto
India:that in the hands of Indianwriters,both English and the modern
Indianlanguagesembody"vernacular"cultureand experience,andthat
the postcolony must always and only representa "periphery"in relation
to the imperial"center."For instance,in addressingthe visual medium
of photographyas well as the verbalmediumof fiction,ArielaFreedman
returnscompulsivelyto the ideaof "vernacular"
art:in herview, Raghubir
Singhattemptsto createa "modernistIndianvernacularin photography,"
and "Singhand Ghosh at once demandthe creationof a new vernacular
andretainan integrallinkto the past."11
Sincethe term'vernacular"
refers
to a "nativelanguage"or "mothertongue,"English can be describedas
a vernacularin Indiaonly in the pejorativemetaphoricalsense of a mediumthatis inherentlysecondaryto the dominantforms of the West- a
value-judgmentbelied by the cosmopolitanism,global readership,and
diasporiclocationsof majorIndian-Englishwriters,fromSalmanRushdie
to RohintonMistry and JhumpaLahiri.The term is no less misleading
for majorIndianlanguagessuch as Hindi or Bengali, whose historyand
evolutionparallelthose of the modem Europeanlanguages,andin which
M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 14 1
writtenliteratureshave existed for a millennium.Sanskrit,the classical

languagein relationto which the modernlanguageswould be vernaculars,began its decline in the twelfth century,while English,the imperial
languagethattook hold in the nineteenthcentury,has not dislodged the
modernliteraryculturesof the majorindigenouslanguages.Hindi,which
is Mohan Rakesh's chosen medium, is also the third most frequently
spoken languagein the world, afterMandarinChinese and English.As
later sections demonstrate,Rakesh is not a "vernacular"writer but a
cosmopolitanmodernistfully cognizantof Westernmovements,but also
fully committedto an indigenizedaesthetic,his cosmopolitanisminhering precisely in the culturalambidexterityof his vision. If his mediumis
not thatof the westernimperialmetropolis,it is a mediumwith its own
thousand-yearimperialandmetropolitanhistory;andif his modernismis
furthestfromtheAnglo-Europeancenterin termsof geography,language,
and culturalcodes, it is proximateenough in theoretical,aesthetic, and
political termsto constitutean importantformationwithin geomodernism.
To acknowledgethis global genealogy is to unsettle the Eurocentric
binarismof centerandperiphery:modernismcanno longerbe approached
as an exclusivelywesternaesthetic,andnon-westernmodernismscannot
be claimed as merely derivativeor subsidiaryversions of a hegemonic
practice.Studiesof postcolonialmodernismthusdo not need to be preoccupiedwith what Gikandicalls "theroles played by ostensible margins
in the constitutionof culturalcenters"or what Walkowitzdescribes as
the "persistentefforts to reimagine the center in terms of peripheries,
within and without,"12
especially when Europeanlanguagesare not the
media of composition. Rather,to deal with postcolonial literatureand
theatrein a multilinguallocationsuch as India,one has to reimaginethe
peripheryas the center,andattendto the internalprocessesof modernist
self-fashioning."Ourexplicit aim," Doyle and Winkiel observe, "is to
collapse the marginand centerassumptionsembeddedin the termmodernismby conjuringinsteada web of twentieth-centuryliterarypractices,
shaped by the circuitry of race, ethnicity, nativism, nationalism, and
imperialismin modernity,andby the idea or commodityof 'modernism'
The samepreferenceforpluralityappearsin Friedman'sassertion
itself."13
that"thenew geographyof modernismneeds to locate many centersof
modernityacrossthe globe, to focus on the culturaltrafficlinkingthem,
and to interpretthe circuits of reciprocalinfluence and transformation
that take place within highly unequal state relations."14
My discussion
in the remainderof this essay attemptsto locate one such center in the
discoursesof modernityandmodernismin India,particularizedin Mohan
142
Rakesh's theoreticalargumentsabout literatureand theatre,and in his

groundbreakinglast full-lengthplay.Giventhe raritywith which Indianlanguagewritersaredrawninto this conversation,Rakeshappearsin my
analysis not only as an individualtalentbut as a paradigmaticfigure of
transitionfrom colonialism to postcolonialismwho must be accommodated appropriatelywithin moderniststudies and geomodernism.
2. Modernity and Modernism in India:
Taxonomy, Theory, Practice
The commonest terms for "modern"and "modernity"in the Indian
languages are adhunikaand adhunikata,respectively,and they appear
with the greatest frequency in two leading literary languages of the
modern period, Hindi and Bengali.15Both terms designate a chronology- circa 1850 to the present- as well as a complexof literary,cultural,
and political qualities.In the cultural-politicalsphere,the terms define
a period ("the modernage"); a phase in the history of society and the
nation("modernIndia");andparticularways of thinking("modern"attitudesto, say, society, the family, sexuality,and gender).In the literary
sphere,they denote a body of writing ("modern"Bengali or Punjabior
Gujaratiliterature);a phase in the developmentof a language("modern"
Assamese); specific authorsranging widely in time and place (BankimchandraChatterjee[1838-94], RabindranathTagore [1861-1941],
BuddhadevaBose [1908-74], Gopal KrishnaAdiga [1918-1992], and
Girish Karnad[1938- ],to name a few); genres such as fiction, poetry,
drama,and criticism;modes such as comedy and satire;forms such as
love poetry;particulartechniquesof versificationand fictionalization;
and even the qualitiesof fictionalcharactersin novels or plays. In many
criticalstudies,the conceptof adhunikatabodhis employedas a measure
of the "sense"or "understanding"
of modernityin the workof a particular
authoror groupof authors."Modern"is also variouslysynonymouswith
"new" {naya or navya) "contemporary"(sarnakaleen),"progressive"
(pragatisheel), and even "post-independence"(svatantrayottara);its
establishedantonymis "tradition"
(parampara).However,the equivalent
- adhunikatavad- is entirely absent in Indianterm for "modernism"
languagetaxonomy and theory.The theoreticalterm closest to it is uttara-adhunikatavad
(postmodernism),andthe dozen or so worksdealing
with this movementin the Indianlanguagesare completely dwarfedby
the currencyof adhunikaand adhunikata.
The absence of a distinctionbetween "modernity"and "modernism"
in Indiantaxonomypresentsa notablecontrastto the West,which con-
tinues to regardmodernismas a specific aesthetic-politicalexpression

of modernity,however permeable its boundaries.16The Indian usage
has to be understood,therefore,in relationto two defining featuresof
subcontinentalliterarymodernity:the pervasivenessand simultaneous
indigenizationof western influences, and a paradoxicalrelationto tra"thevery colonial cruciblein
dition.Accordingto Dipesh Chakrabarty,
which Bengali [readIndian]modernityoriginatedensuredthatit would
not be possible to fashion a historicalaccount of the birth of this modernitywithoutreproducingsome aspect of Europeannarrativesof the
For
modernsubject- forEuropeanmodernitywas presentatthisbirth."17
in
drama
and
theatre
meant
the
example, nineteenth-century
"modernity"
of
a
new
culture
Anglo-Europeanperformance
importation
consisting
of urbancommercialtheatres,prosceniumstaging, an expanding and
literatemiddleclass audience,andnew dramaticforms(the social-realist
play, the historyplay, political allegory,and so on), all undergirdedby
the enormousinfluenceof Shakespeare.But if the formsandinstitutions
of colonialperformancewere borrowed,its languageswere overwhelmingly Indian,and its subjects came largely from Indianmyth, history,
literature,society, andpolitics. The aestheticof western-stylerealistand
political dramadeveloped alongside indigenizedforms of musical and
spectaculartheatre;Kalidasa emerged as the canonical counterpartto
Shakespeare.As SudiptaKavirajnotes, "modernitypresentedwriters
with two differentliteraryworlds, one drawnfromIndiantraditions,the
other from the West.Authorsimprovisedby using elements from both
aesthetic alphabetsand produced new forms that were irreducibleto
either."Hence a "distinctivelyIndian. . . species of the literarymodern"
emergedfrom the colonial encounter,one which distanceditself from,
but also assimilated,tradition.18
Conceptually,therefore,Indianmodernityis definedoverwhelmingly
by/as that initial moment of rupturefrom indigenoustraditionbrought
aboutby colonialism,one thatcontainsall subsequentdisjunctionsas extensionsof the originalbreach.Forexample,thePicadorBookof Modern
IndianLiteraturebegins chronologicallywith MichaelMadhusudanDutt
(bornin 1824) and ends with SunetraGupta(bornin 1965)- a strategy
of periodizationandgroupingwithoutparallelin westernrepresentations
of modernity.It is possible for criticswriting a decade apartto describe
Mohan Rakesh (b. 1925) as the "messiahof moderntheatre,"and the
Hindi poet-playwrightBharatenduHarishchandra(born seventy-five
As a chronologiyearsearlier)as a "fountainheadof Indianmodernity."19
cal andqualitativecategory,Indianliterarymodernityencapsulatespart
of the nineteenthcenturyand all of the twentieth,as well as the work of
144
individualauthorsanywherealong the spectrum,althoughTagoreis the

only authorconnectedexplicitly to modernism.20
Admittedly,the use of
the termsadhunikaand adhunikatahas acceleratedtremendouslysince
independence:1972 of the 2142 items in the firstcategory,and 95 of 96
items in the second belong to the post-1950 period, suggestingthatthe
formulationof the ideaof modernityhasbeenmainlya post-independence
preoccupation(some theoristseven assertthat"real"modernitybelongs
only to the post-independencewriters, not their colonial precursors).
But in terms of theframe of reference,the most common usage posits
modernityas a process thatbegan in the nineteenthcenturyand continues into the present,withoutany overt acknowledgmentof a modernist
configurationin the latertwentiethcentury.
Demarcatingmodernismas a particularphase within the continuum
of modernityis important,however,because of the very intensityof the
rupturebetweencolonialandpostcolonialformsof expressionacrossthe
entirespectrumof genresandlanguages.In Kaviraj's phrase,the colonial
writerspossessed a "travesticmodernity"in which the accomplishments
of one generationwere cancelledout and"madeimpossible"by the next.
In Bengali, even majorauthorssuch as Dutt andTagorecould not create
"a repertoireof acknowledgedstyles in which literarywriting could be
carriedon for the indefinitefuture,"leadingto a demandfor change "in
the fundamentalaesthetic itself."21In theatre,the first serious critique
of colonial practicescame fromthe IndianPeople's TheatreAssociation
(IPTA),which was launchedin 1943 as the anti-Fascist,anti-imperialist
culturalwing of the CommunistPartyof India. The IPTAmanifestoes
describedurbandramaof the previous half centuryas having fallen to
"some of the lowest depthsof degeneration"because of its dependence
on inane middle-class conventionalityor its escape into "bad history
and senseless mythology."22
Rooting itself in the "significantfacts, aspirations,and strugglesof our people," the movement also assertedits
commitmentto a "national"perspective:"theIPTAin its dramaticworks,
while alwayskeen to imbibehealthyinfluencesfromabroad,must strive
to see that its work is rooted in the nationaltradition.All cosmopolitan
tendencies, which have no relevance to our living conditions,must be
A decade later,however,the IPTAwas in serious decline as
opposed."23
a populist nationaltheatremovement, and the first generationof major
post-independenceplaywrightswas shaped precisely by the opposite
values of a rooted cosmopolitanism and a skeptical, if not intensely
critical,attitudetowardthe nation.
Modernism in Indian theatre is therefore a postcolonial (and still
unfolding) phenomenon, and the dominant aesthetic of the period
(1955-1975) duringwhich suchplaywrightsas DharamvirBharati,Vijay

BadalSircar,GirishKarnad,andmostnotably,MohanRakesh,
Tendulkar,
their
pioneeringwork (Left-wingpoliticaltheatrewas the only
produced
outside
its ambit).In specificrelationto the West,this Indianform
major
languagemodernismappearsmoreinevitablethandeliberate:it is not so
muchthatcertainauthorsset out self-consciouslyto emulateEuro-modernismin the mid-twentiethcentury,but that, given their cosmopolitan
conditioning,aesthetic proclivities, and historical circumstances,they
compulsivelyreinventedmodernismfor theirown time andplace. With
respectto colonialantecedents,these authorsdistancethemselvesequally
fromthe commercialismof theatreimpresariossuch as GirishChandra
Ghosh (1844-1912) and D. L. Roy (1864-1913), and the nationalist
culturalprojectof literaryplaywrightssuchas MichaelMadhusudanDutt
(1824-1873), BhartenduHarishchandra(1850-1885), and Jaishankar
Prasad(1889-1 937). Like colonialplaywrights,thepostcolonialmodernists turnobsessively to Indianmythandhistory,butmainlyto re-imagine
the past as a radicalanaloguefor an imperfectpresent;the plays they set
in the presentaremainlyrealistportraitsof the modernurbanindividual
caughtin the nexus of familial claims and societal norms.Both settings
producederomanticizedand deeply ambivalentviews of the nationand
national culture. Most importantly,these playwrights representwhat
FredricJamesoncalls the "full-blownideology of modernism"- "that
momentin which the modern. . . [is] theorizedand conceptuallynamed
And they do
and identifiedin termsof the autonomyof the aesthetic."24
so by establishingnew models of literaryauthorshipin which drama
appearsfor the first time as a "private"textual act dissociable in principle- thoughnot in practice- fromperformance.
It is worthemphasizingatthis pointthatthe appropriateumbrellaterm
for these shifts in the theory and practice of Indiantheatreis modernism ratherthanpostmodernism.Theoristssuch as EdwardSaid, Gayatri
Spivak,andHomi Bhabha,andthe leadingpoeticianof postmodernism,
LindaHutcheon,have variouslyencouragedthe parallelidentificationof
postcolonialismandpostmodernismas revisionarylate-twentieth-century
aestheticandpolitical movements.Hutcheonlocates the principaloverlap between the two in their common oppositionto "a generalizedand
usually demonized . . . thing called modernity,and its artistic expreswhich was seen as "an internationalmovement,
sion, modernism,"25
elitist, imperialist, 'totalizing,' willing to appropriatethe local while
Otherimportantpoints of
being condescendingtowardsits practice."26
contactare a common interestin self-reflexivity,irony,andmarginality,
and a suspicion of history as an authoritativediscourse about the past.
146
Hutcheonadmits,however,thatthe complicitpolitics of postmodernism

presenta strongcontrastto the oppositionalpolitics of postcolonialism,
while its deconstructiveimpulses can be disempowering:"Thecurrent
post-structuralist/postmodern
challenges to the coherent, autonomous
subjecthave to be puton hold in feministandpost-colonialdiscourses. . .
[those] challenges are in many ways the luxury of the dominantorder
which can affordto challenge thatwhich it securelypossesses."27
The very glibness of this commentpointsto a problematicdissonance
between Hutcheon'sneat theoreticalgeneralizationsand the particular
discoursesthatareher subject.As AnthonyAppiahhas pointedout with
reference to a specific genre, Europhone,postcolonialAfrican novels
are fictions of delegitimationthat reject the western imperiumas well
as the nationalistprojectof the postcolonialbourgeoisie,but are not for
this reason postmodernworks. Like postmodernism,postcolonialism
challenges earlier legitimatingnarratives,but in the name of an ethical universal and a simple respect for human suffering. "And on that
ground,"Appiahconcludes,"itis not an ally forWesternpostmodernism
but an agonist, from which I believe postmodernismmay have someFriedmanarguesthat the modernismsemergingfrom
thing to learn."28
the nationalistic,decolonizingimpulsesof postcolonialismneed time to
establish themselves, but "to call [these] postliberationarts 'postmodern'- as they often are- is to miss the point entirely."29
It is significant
in this contextthat SalmanRushdie'sembraceof postmodernmigrancy
and his predilectionfor irony,parody,and pastiche make him the only
anglophoneauthorof South-Asianorigin who is invoked by Western
theoristsof the postcolonialpostmodern.Ariela Freedmanstrategically
juxtaposesRushdiewith two postcolonialmoderns,RaghubirSinghand
Amitav Ghosh, both of whom describe modernismas conducive and
postmodernismas tangentialto theirart.Inhabitingthe language-world
of Hindi ratherthan English, Rakesh'swriting in its entiretyevokes an
indigenizedbut cosmopolitanaesthetic that is also emphaticallymodernist,not postmodernist,and intersectswith the more familiarformsof
Euro-modernismin especially fascinatingways.
3. The Cosmopolitan Modernism of Mohan Rakesh
In a theatreculturewhere most playwrightsoffer little self-reflexive
commentaryon their chosen genre, Rakesh's systematicreflectionson
dramaand theatreover the course of a controversialcareermake up an
extraordinaryarchive, especially in light of his prematuredeath at the
age of forty-sevenin 1972. Collectedposthumously,most recently in a

convenientsingle volume titled Natya-vimarsha,30
the writings vary in
and
but
are
a
linked
occasion,
form,subject,
by cosmopolitansensibility
thatmoves fluidlybetweenthe personal/local,the regional,the national,
Inhis playprefacesanda handfulof personalessays,
andthe international.
Rakeshfocusesspecificallyon the Hindistageandhis own positionwithin
the traditionsof Hindi and Indiantheatre.But the general questionsto
which he returnsrepeatedly- the natureof modernity,the relevanceof
westernto Indianpractices,the relationof wordsandlanguageto theatre,
and drama'srelationto technology and the technologicalmedia of film
andradio- areinvariablyformulatedin the contextof worldtheatre,especiallymodernwesterntheatre.Suchauthorsas Chekhov,Gorki,Kafka,
Woolf,Eliot, Spender,Sartre,Camus,Hemingway,Brecht,Beckett,and
Pinterappearin the essays as strategicpoints of referencefor arguments
aboutcriticism,authorship,form, sexuality,the inbuiltobsolescence of
avant-gardeexperimentsin theatre,andso on. Complementingthe essays
area series of public andpolemical forumsfor Rakesh'sideas:the 1966
East-WestSeminarin Bombay,a conversationwith the Sovietplaywright
Alexei Arbuzov(dateunavailable),a long interviewwith CarloCoppola
(recordedin 1968 andpublishedin 1973), anda NationalRoundtableon
Relevanceof TraditionalTheatre,organizedby India's
the Contemporary
NationalAcademy of the PerformingArts in 1971. His most complex
interculturalexperience came in 1970-71, when he visited Geneva,
Moscow,Vienna,Prague,Munich,Paris,London,East andWestBerlin,
Copenhagen,Stockholm,andHelsinkito gathermaterialsfor his Nehru
Fellowshipprojecttitled "TheDramaticWord."At the time of his death,
Rakeshwas preparingto visit SoutheastAsia and the United States for
furtherresearch,and left behindan outline of the projectin English that
forms an Appendixto Natya-vimarsha.
In view of this internationalism(an importantdimensionof Rakesh's
cosmopolitanism),his "modernity"could well be regardedas an effect
of his membershipin the synchronouscommunityof world theatre.His
modernistpositions, however, are intimatelyrelated to the sense of a
radicalrupturebetweenthe "old"andthe "new"in mid-twentieth-century
Indian-languagewriting- a breakthatis generationalas well as historical
becauseit coincideswith the transitionfromcolonialismto postcolonialism. Rakeshregardsthe event of Partitionin 1947 as the beginning of
a crisis that enveloped the generationof writerswho came to maturity
in the 1954-64 period, giving this decade the same transformativerole
thatthe 1910s performedin Anglo-modernism.The immediatecontext
of much of his theorizingis the emergenceof the "new shortstory"and
148
the "new poetry" in Hindi, but the crucial general stance is a sense of
absolute and irreconcilable difference from the pre-independence generation, proclaimed in an essay appropriately titled "Imaratein tutane par"
("On the Collapse of Structures"):
A new era does not begin in literatureuntil the consciousness
of the age has been convertedinto certainconvictions and uncertainties.As long as some entrenchedideas continueto propel
consciousness,the earlierage thatis in decline does not come to
an end. In the years afterPartition,the clash betweenthe outgoing and incoming eras has been constantlyevident ... In this
kind of battle, there are no groundsfor give-and-take.. . [and]
any talk of a compromise,of "takingthe good and rejectingthe
bad in both"seems pointless andunfounded.This is not a crisis
of relativeachievements,aboutwhat is good in one or the other,
but of two radicallyopposite visions that cannotbe reconciled
underany circumstances.31
This sense of mutual antagonism appears unfailingly whenever Rakesh
takes up generational relations among Hindi authors. Tongue firmly in
cheek, he describes the phony complacency with which the old establishment has decided to label the new writing nonsensical, half-baked,
and merely fashionable, so that it poses no threat to the edifice of Hindi
literature. "The new writers," Rakesh asserts,
haveno complaintat all thatthe criticsof the oldergenerationdid
not offer them recognition;rather,it's the critics who complain
about the new people not wanting recognition from them . . .
They've not given themselves time to ponderwhy a generation
thathas no intellectualcompatibilitywith them, whose creative
values do not matchtheircriticalvalues, would place any importance on their validation,especially when they have placed the
bar of conventionacross their own receptivity?(BK 79)
The embeddednessof these argumentsin the particularitiesof modern Hindi writing is self-evident,but throughouthis careerRakeshalso
asserted the need to conceptualize an Indian modernity independent
of western models. In an essay intriguinglytitled "Samajik-asamajik"
("Social-Antisocial"),he complains that the debate about modernity
and the new sensibility in Indiahas always been dependenton extrinsic
conceptsof modernity,althoughthereis no genuinerelationbetweenthe
two. Consequently,when derivativeideas are used to evaluate literary
experimentsathome, "eitherthose ideasseem superficialandunfounded,
or all of our literaturebegins to look shallow and backward"(BK 85).

In the mimetic genre of theatre,there is an even greaterneed to avoid
replicatingthe modes of developed nations, because such imitations
create a false sense of avant-gardismwithout accomplishinganything
real. Rakesh'sdissociation from the mimic men of his own generation
is unambiguous:
[Their]visionis concernedwithgivingthe stagea "new"and
"modern"
look fromthe outside,andnot with searchingfor a
livesandcircumstances.
Forthatquest
withinourpersonal
theatre
- a
of ourlife andenvironment
we needa deepunderstanding
of thetheatrical
clearrecognition
possibilitiesof theassaultsand
on our sensibilities.Onlythis questcan lead
counter-assaults
andgive shape
us in the directionof reallynew experiments,
with whicheven we havenot yet become
to thattheatrecraft
(NV44)
acquainted.
Elsewhere,Rakesh mocks those for whom "reallife can only be lived
outsidethis country,new literaryexperimentsarepossible only in other
languages,the problemsof the age arebornonly in the Atlanticand Pacific continents,and the truetouch of modernitycan be felt only in the
air of EuropeandAmerica"{BK 109). His unease is in line with Partha
Chatterjee'sargumentthat "modernitywas a contextuallylocated and
enormously contested idea" in India because "in the world arena of
modernity,we are outcastes, untouchables,"while in the Indian arena
writerswere not able to subscribeto any uniformconcept of modernity
"irrespectiveof geography,time, environmentor social conditions."
"Oursis the modernityof the once-colonized,"Chatterjeeobserves, and
his enablingmove is to derivethe particularfromthe universal:"if there
is any universalor universallyapplicabledefinitionof modernity,it is
this:thatby teachingus to employ the methodsof reason,universalmoRakesh's
dernityenablesus to identifyour own particularmodernity."32
theatre
first
that
demands
give
Indian-language
particularmodernity
adequateexpressionto the existence aroundit, and only then approach
expressingthe nationaland the global.
Conversely,with immediateeverydayexperienceas his main focus,
Rakesh sees no incompatibilitybetween modernityand the categories
of "Indianness"and "intrinsictradition"that were valorized after independence.In an essay, "The Elements of Modernityversus the Elements of Indianness,"he poses his argumentson this subjectas a set of
questions:
150
Whatis this Indianness?Is Indiantraditionan inert static

substanceor an endlesslyamplifyingcurrent?Is it necessarily
antithetical
to so-calledmodernity?
Is this modernitya necessarydemandof historyormerelya charadeto fill ourowninner
void withmawkishforeignimitations?
Andaboveall, is there
an oppositionbetweenuniversalityandnationaltraditionsin
therealmof art?33
Rakesh thereforerejects a shallow dependenceon the West as well as
the appealsto intrinsictraditionand essentialIndianness.Whathe does
formulateis a powerful argumentfor an indigenized (not vernacular)
modernismthatcandealwiththe sprawlingchaosof contemporary
Indian
life without resortingto either derivativenessor dogmatic revivalism.
The traditionsof living, he argues,have precedenceover the traditions
of art, and the issue of traditionhas to be consideredin relationto the
life of the people, not only in relationto literature.
Rakesh's modernismin the theatreconsists, then, in a rupturefrom
the "modern"practices of the previous century,a re-valuationof the
playwright as artist, a focus on the word as the defining element in
drama,and an unsentimentalapproachto the nation'spast and present.
As a playwright,he disengages himself, both explicitly and implicitly,
fromall the dominantformationsof the colonialperiod:the commercial
urbanParsi stage, the unstageableliterarydramaof such majorHindi
authorsas BhartenduHarishchandra
(1850-1 885) andJaishankarPrasad
and
the
(1889-1937),
populist political theatrelaunchedby the IPTA
in the 1940s. Parsi theatrein his view was a ridiculousspectacle modeled on second-ratewestern theatrethat could create only a "low and
rotten"legacy for theatrein Hindi. Harishchandrawas a pioneer who
failed due to limited means and the absence of support,while Prasad
"brokeaway from the Parsi company traditions,but neither advanced
Bhartendu'straditionnor createdany sign of a new traditionin theatre"
from
(NV37). Both literaryplaywrightsseparated"drama-as-verbal-text"
but
the
effect
of
Prasad's
'theatre-as-popular-performance,"
especially
refinedlanguage,thematicgravity,and literaryperfectionwas such that
"thevery consciousnessof the relationshipbetween dramaandthe stage
disappeared"from the playwright'scraft (7VF38).In the preface to his
firstplay (publishedin 1958), Rakeshacknowledgesthatdramain Hindi
is not linked to any particulartheatricaltradition,but insists that the
Hindi stage will "haveto take a leadingrole in representingthe cultural
needs andaspirationsof the Hindi-speakingregion"(NV17). In the essay
"Natakakaraur rangmanch"("ThePlaywrightandthe Theatre"),he adds
that despite a deep interestin contemporarytheatricalactivity,he feels
M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 15 I
cut off fromit becauseHindi lacks the kind of well-developedtheatrein

which the playwrightcould createa viable role for himself (NV 41).
Imagininga futurein which "drama"and "theatre"can achieve parity is thereforea crucialmove for Rakesh,and his revisionaryaesthetic
atthe centerof bothactivities.A 1966 English
placestheplaywright-artist
essay titled "LookingAroundas a Playwright"sets the tone by describing the act of writing as the expression of an irrepressibleurge and a
psychic struggle:
Whatconcernsme mostis my desireto write,orto putit more
aptly,my inabilityto helpwritingplays.Theforcesinsideand
outsideme createa sortof compulsion to expressandcommunicatesomethingthatis by itsownnaturedramatic What
is this great'something'?I do not know.It is in the air,in the
age,in me. I knowit is there,butcannotgive it a name.Maybe
I wantto writedramabecauseI cannotgive it a name.34
Topersistentquestionsaboutwhy he choosesto writeaboutcertainthings
andnot others,Rakesh'sresponseis that"I cannotwrite, or try to write,
like anyone else, because I am not anyone else. I write [in] a particular
way . . . because I find facility in writingthatway."35The importanceof
"writing"also leads him to questionthe claim that theatre,like film, is
a "director'smedium":for him the dramatictext exists independentof
the stagingprocess, andregardingthe directoras the sole orchestratorof
the performanceevent creates an artisticvoid in theatre.The ideal that
Rakeshposits in theory and practiceis an equal collaborationbetween
the living author,director,and performers,but there is no discursive
context in which he is willing to cede the priorityof the playwrightas
author,and of dramaas text.
Thistextualistconceptof theplaywrightis inseparablefromthe instrumentalrole of languagein theatre,embodiedin whatRakeshpersistently
calls "thedramaticword.""Theproblemof wrestlingwith languagefor
the sake of expression,"he comments,"comesbeforeeverywriter- that
is, beforeevery alertand sensitivewriter,"becausethe attemptto articulate feeling is always "incomplete."Languageis also for Rakesh both
a "primitive"and a "finite"instrument,and the "graphsof sensation"
are so complex that the act of writing always leaves behind a residual
anguishaboutwhat has remainedunsaid(BK1\). Much of this struggle
for expression evokes the well-known passage in the final movement
of T. S. Eliot's "BurntNorton":"Wordsstrain,/ Crack,and sometimes
break,underthe burden,/ Underthe tension, slip, slide, perish,/ Decay
with imprecision,will not stay in place / Will not stay still."36But this
152
writerlyagonsymptomaticof highmodernismdoes notprecludeRakesh's

of drama,
firm,even stubborninsistenceon languageas the sine qua
in
the
In
a
with
Alexei
conversation
Arbuzov,
especially
post-cinemaage.
he arguesthatdramaandtheatrehave to be regardedas primarilyverbalauralratherthanvisual forms,becausein mimeticterms,auralityis what
separatesdramafromfilm:"thefundamentaldifferencebetweenthe two
mediums is that in one, the visual expectationgives birthto the word,
and in the other, the verbal expectationgives birth to the scene" (NV
65). Wordsand images are certainlyinterdependentin both media, but
the word is centralto drama,andthe image to film. Rakeshalso clarifies
- words
thatword-centerednessin theatredoes not enforce"literariness"
have to achieve not literaryeffects but the resonancesappropriateto a
particulardramaticstructure.
The secondpoint of convergencebetweentheatreandfilm is technology. In the samemeasurethathe valueswords,Rakeshdevaluesspectacle
and mere technical sophistication.In an essay titled "TheatreWithout
Walls,"he arguesthatthe "over-elaborationof technicaldevices and an
increasingdependenceon them, in the given conditions here, is more
likely to retardthe growthof theatreand confine it to a groove thatmay
not let it expand into new and original shapes throughits own dynamism."37Like his contemporaryBadal Sircar(b. 1925), Rakeshbelieves
thattheatreshould cultivateits distinctivecharacteristicsand maximize
its own possibilities, insteadof getting caughtup in a game of technical
one-upmanshipwith film that it is boundto lose. He is also unfazedby
the chargethathis thinkingmay be determinedby "drama"ratherthan
otherformsof theatre,becausehis "primeconcern,"he declares,"is with
this form of theatreonly."38For Rakesh, a rejectionof the word would
eventuallychallengethe veryexistenceof "dramatictheatre,"because"all
effortsto expandthe visual possibilitiesof theatrethroughtechnological
legerdemaineventuallyonly underscoreits limitationsandvulnerability
in comparisonwith film"(NV6%).In the exchangewithArbuzov,he also
resists the suggestion that the issues of word and languagemay have a
disproportionatesignificancein post-independenceIndia,because "in a
broaderperspectivethey are also the fundamentalquestionsfor theatre
everywhere"(NV 70). To sum up, Rakesh locates the uniqueness of
theatrenot in its mimetic qualities(which it shareswith film) or even in
the fact of live performance,but in the creationof a living idiom for the
stage, which he describesas the playwright'sparticularchallenge.
Finally, Rakesh is led by the shape of his own theatricalcareerto
reconcile the principle of modernity with the historical matter from
antiquitythat formedthe basis of two of his threemajorplays. The first
play, Ashadh ka ek din (1958), used the figure of Kalidasato offer its
ironicportraitof the artist,caughtbetween the provincialsourcesof his
poetic inspirationandthe ambiguousattractionsof metropolitanpatronage. The secondplay,Lahronke rajhans( 1963), symbolicallyevokedthe
tension and malaise in the palace of the Buddha'sstepbrother,Nand, as
Nand inexorablyloses interestin a life of marriedluxurywith his wife
Sundari,and sets out at the end to seek the eightfold path of enlightenment.In the case of Kalidasa,Rakeshwas accusedof passing off fiction
as "history"for the sole purposeof debasingthe symbol of Indianliterary greatness.But afterthe success of Lahronke rajhans, he was also
accused of turninghis back on an unmanageablepresentby retreating
into a pristinepast.
Rakesh'srejoinderto the critiqueis in parta version of Eliot's argument in "Traditionand the IndividualTalent,"that "thehistoricalsense
involves a perception,not only of the pastness of the past, but of its
presence; . . . This historicalsense, which is a sense of the timeless as
well as of the temporaland of the timeless and the temporaltogether,is
what makes a writertraditional.And it is at the same time what makes
the writeracutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contempoIn the interviewwith CarloCoppola,Rakeshclarifiesthathis
raneity."39
historicalplays, like those of otherHindiplaywrightssuch as Dharamvir
Bharatiand Jagdish ChandraMathur,are not exegeses on history, or
sentimentalportraitsof an age to which the authorswere particularly
attached,or forms of revivalism and reaction.Rather,history interests
him principallyfor its symbolic andexplanatorypower in relationto the
present.Kalidasais not so much an individualas a representationof the
"creativeenergies"within Indianculture,and of the internalstruggles
thatdestabilizethe creativeself in every age. "I for one could not find a
betterlabel, a bettersign, for our cumulativecreativeabilities,"Rakesh
notes (NV 105). Conversely,"It is not the things and events here and
now that are contemporary,but the way in which one sees them . . .
No work of art is ever modernbecause of its subject . . . [but]because
of the way in which that subjecthas been treated."Rakesh defines this
"contemporaryvision" as "a phenomenonof the mind that gives a particulardirectionto its faculties and makes it see and interpretthings in
a light that emerges from the events and attributesof the age."A lot of
historicalplays aremeaninglesscostumedramas,and a lot of ostensibly
modernandcontemporary
plays areprimitiveandarchaic.As forhimself,
he
is
"not
that
Rakesh claims
really aware of having written anything
thatis not contemporary."40
154
Notwithstandingthese theoreticaljustifications,Rakeshdid come to

acknowledgethathis two historyplays were admireddisproportionately
for their literaryelegance, and somethingwas lacking in the dramatic
realizationand meaning of their words. "In my third play," he notes,
"I tried to graspthe realities of the life aroundme in a straightforward
way, and tried to search for a language that would be the language of
ordinaryconversationand accessible to the largestnumbersof spectators" (NV 155). The result, Adhe adhure {The Unfinished,1969), was
hailed almost overnightas a classic of the nuclearfamily's materialand
emotional collapse within the circumscribedspace of the middle class
urbanhome. Significantly,the strongestendorsementsof the play came
fromimportantdirectorsof Rakesh'swork. Om Shivpuridescribedit as
"thefirstmeaningfulHindi play aboutcontemporarylife ... Its characters, situations,and psychological states are realisticand believable . . .
It has the capabilityof graspingthe tension of contemporarylife."41For
SatyadevDubey, it "explodedthe myth that the Hindi playwrightcannot producea work dealingwith contemporarysituationsandcharacters
connectedwith our life" (57V337). Both EbrahimAlkazi and Rajinder
Nath saw the unusuallysuccessful 1969 productionsin Delhi andBombay as signs of a new interest in serious theatreon the part of urban
Indian audiences. The play's status as a modernisttour de force rests
on its particularintegrationof form and content,theme and treatment.
It takes up what Una Chaudhurihas called a "foundationaldiscourse"
of moderndrama- the representationof home as a place of victimage
fromwhich the protagoniststrugglesto escape for the sake of autonomy
and selfhood- andtransformsit througha stylized, indigenizedrealism
that capturesexactly the conjunctureof failed ambitions, spaces, and
relationshipsin the postcolonialmetropole.42
4. Adhe adhure and the Unfinished Project of Living
I amjust aboutto completea playthatis calledAdheadhure.
Adhuremeans"incomplete"
andadhemeans"half."Thisrefers
to theordinary
socialmilieutodaythatis in itselfboth"half and
It'sthe storyof a middleclassfamilyin thiscity
"incomplete."
whichis beingdraggeddownby circumstances
intothe lower
class.Theirpassions,defeats,desires,struggles,andalongwith
these,the situationgraduallyslippingoutof theirhands- I've
triedto showall thisin theplay. . . ThethingI wantto showis
thattheindividualis notsolelyresponsibleforhis situation,becausewhatever
thecircumstances
hadbeen,hewouldhavehadto
makethesamechoicesagainandagain.Whatever
theindividual
choosesinlifeentailsa specialirony,becausecircumstances
take
thesameturnagainandagain.(NV60)
These remarksby Rakesh duringhis interview with Carlo Coppola
(recordedin July 1968) containthe two dominanttropes of the play he
was about to finish: a few half-realizedselves strugglingendlessly to
escape a vicious andclosed circle of circumstances.Adheadhureis, first
and foremost,a triumphof the atmosphericsof entrapment,established
at the drama'svery beginning in the performativeand generic rather
than informativeand individualizeddescriptionsof characterand setting. The list of dramatispersonae begins by identifyingfive roles for
a single actor,who opens the action by delivering a monologue as the
Man in the Black Suit, and then appearsas Man 1, Man 2, Man 3, and
Man 4, playing multiple roles in relationto the forty-year-oldWoman
A twenty-one-year-oldSon, an Older
who is the play's "maincharacter."
Daughterwho is twenty,and a YoungerDaughterwho is thirteenround
off this "representative"family. While the older Man's five successive
roles aredifferentiatedby the qualitiesof "ironiccivility,""desperation,"
"complacency,""self-centeredness,"and "callowness,"the remaining
charactersbelong to the uniformlynegative registerof "regret,""conflict," "malaise," "frenzy,""revolt," and "bitterness"{SN 242). The
same qualitiesof uncontainabledisorderextendto the all-purposeroom
in which "thebrokenremnantsof the past statusof this home . . . have
somehow managedto keep a place for themselves,"their presence being more intolerablenow thantheirabsencewould have been (57V243).
Incongruity,decay, and disconnectioncharacterizethe space of home,
evoking the "urbanexhaustion"that,accordingto ArjunAppadurai,has
seriouslybegun to challenge the modernistambience of Indianmetropolitancities.43At the same time, Rakesh'splay seems to paradoxically
conceptionof modernism(following Marshall
exemplify Chakrabarty's
means by which an urbanand literateclass
as
"the
aesthetic
Berman)
forces
of modernizationseeks to create,however
to
the
invasive
subject
at
of
a
sense
being home in the moderncity."44
falteringly,
Whilethebeginningof Adheadhuresuggestsa stylized,genericdrama
of emotionaldysfunction,the body of the play containsa "realistic"action in which the charactershave individualizednames. Mahendranath
(Man 1) is a failed entrepreneurwho no longer provides for his family,
and describes himself as a parasitewho has devouredhis home from
the inside. Savitri (Woman),the family's only breadwinner,is caught
between the desperatedaily struggle to keep the household going and
156
her desire for escape. Binni (OlderDaughter)has recently eloped with

a man from whom she alreadyfeels estrangedwithoutknowing thathe
was probablyher mother's lover. Kinni (YoungerDaughter)has channeled herrageagainsta decenteredlife intoa precocioussexualcuriosity.
Midwaythroughthe play Savitritries to coax hercallow boss Singhania
(Man 2) to find a job for the shiftless Ashok (Son), then cracks under
the strainand leaves with a wealthy formerlover, Jagmohan(Man 3),
even as Mahendranathseeks refuge in the home of his formerbusiness
partnerandconfidante,Juneja(Man4). However,Jagmohan'slife canno
longeraccommodatean old attachment,andJunejalecturesSavitriboth
on her vice-like hold over her husbandand the futility of her belief that
she has any real choices in life. At the end of the play all five characters
are back in the intolerableplace of victimage, waiting for the cycle of
recriminationsto begin again.
In creatingan intimateconnectionbetween economic decline, emotional disintegration,and the space of home, Adhe adhure echoes the
familialfocus andconflictualstructureof westernrealistdrama,butwith
crucialdifferences.First,thereis no single "protagonist"
whose selfhood
can renderthe strugglewith home in individualistictermsandrelateit to
the idea of a singulardestiny.Rather,the conditionof victimageextends
to all the inhabitantsof home:everymemberof Mahendranath
's familyis
equallyalienatedfromevery othermember,creatingthe play's signature
atmosphereof constantly erupting emotion. Second, the dysfunction
within the family is a modernistreversalof Indianculturalcodes that
are normativein the same measurethat they are unattainable,and seriously limit the idea of individualautonomy.Underlyingthe historicalmaterialdevelopmentof the family in contemporaryIndia are mythic
models- derivedmainly fromthe Ramayanaandthe Mahabharataand
reinforceddaily in the mass-culturalnarrativesof cinema and television- of perfect love, duty, obedience, and respect between husband
and wife, fatherand son, older andyoungersiblings. Chakrabarty
notes
the struggle in Bengali modernitybetween "passionson one side and
familialorkinshipobligationson the other,"whichled to the subjectionof
"sentiments[to] the guidinghandof (a moral)reason"so thatthe idealof
"respectabledomesticity"couldbe preserved.He also describespabitrata
(purity)as a touchstonethat suppressedthe emergenceof "a category
such as 'sexuality' that could have mediatedbetween the physical and
In contrast,Adhe adhure
psychological effects of sexual attraction."45
bracketsmoralreasonandunderscoresthe sexualtransgressionsof all its
characters,the women even morethanthe men. By emphaticallydenying
respectabledomesticity and the ideal of purity,it makes the inherited
normsof familial conductobsolete, and places the urbanIndianfamily

on a recognizably"modern"and modernistfooting.
Third,the play stresses the condition of victimage but excludes the
heroism of departure.Mahendranath'sattemptsto walk away from his
hollow life follow a completelypredictablepatternof rebelliousdeparture
andhumiliatingreturn,becausehe does not "everfeel well afterleaving
the house."Savitritriesto use herpowerover Jagmohanto convincehim
thatherfamilylife has become "completely,completelyimpossible,"but
his evasions send her back, more bitterand disillusionedthan ever (SN
313; 302). Indeed,home in this play has the power to ravagecharacters
even aftertheyhave supposedlyescapedfromit. Unawareof hermother's
historywith her husband,the older daughtertalks about carryingaway
somethingwithin herself from her home which has eaten into her new
marriageand filled her with pent-upemotion.
Olderdaughter.I comehere... I comehereonlyso that. . .
Woman
[Savitri]:Thisis yourownhome.
Olderdaughter.My ownhome!. . . Yes.AndI comeso thatI
maytryoncemoreto searchforthatthingbecauseof whichI am
humiliatedoverandoveragain!(In an almostbreakingvoice)
Canyoutell me,Mama,whatthatthingis?Andwhereit'shiding?Inthewindowsanddoorsof thishouse?Intheroof?Inthe
walls?In you?In Daddy?In Kinni?In Ashok?Whereis that
awfulthingwhichhe says I havecarriedawaywithinmyself
fromthishouse?(SN263)
At the end of the play, as all five charactersreturnto the place they hate,
Savitri "looks outwardswith glazed eyes and sits down slowly in the
chair,"acknowledgingthe impossibilityof release (SN 325).
Therearetwo otherimportantmeansof a modernistswerveawayfrom
anddialogue.The performance
realismmAdhe adhure:characterization
of five rolesby a single actoris notjust a Brechtiandevice demonstrating
the alienationof actor from role and of characterfrom a stable ethos,
but an existential move uncovering the closed loop of social, sexual,
and conjugalrelationshipsbetween adultwomen and men. The Man in
the Black Suit who initially addressesthe audience in the metatheatrical mannerof Pirandelloor Anouilh describeshimself as the uncertain
symbol of an uncertainplay, neither outside nor inside the action, the
faceless figure we may bump into on the sidewalk without taking any
notice. Yet he also claims to be a fixed point of reference,the one who
knows that the identities and circumstancesof the "special"family in
the play might change, but not the fact of men and women having to
158
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endureeach otheragainsttheirwill. The fourdramaticroles this character performsin the course of the play underscorethe futility of Savitri's
rebellion against her marriage,because she encountersthe same man
wherever she turns- as husband,boss, lover, and nemesis. Each man
uses and discardsher, but the point of this repetitionis the absence of
choice: intimacybetween adultsleads inevitablyto disaffection,and all
men are eventuallyversions of the same man. In a climactic exchange,
Junejatells Savitrithatshe was attractedto a succession of men because
but living with any of themwould have
they were "not-Mahendranath,"
made them similarlyrepugnant.His final word is a rejectionof agency:
"And even then you have felt that you can make a choice. But moving
from rightto left, from frontto back, from this cornerto thatcorner. . .
have you really seen the possibility of a choice anywhere?Tell me, have
you seen it?"(SN 323).
This lesson is enforcedrelentlesslybecausethereareno act andscene
divisions andno breaksin the action,only transitionsfromone phase to
the next designatedby changes in lighting. The dialogue in the play is
spare,and the syntax imitatesthe indirectionsand elisions of conversation. Most of the conversationbetweenthe charactersis deliberatelyflat,
inarticulate,inconclusive.Experimentingwith languageas the measure
of (dis)connectionbetween humanbeings, Rakesh employs a register
in which words are used not to say somethingbut to not say something,
and conversation deterioratesperiodically into babble. Most lines of
dialogue repeat somethingthat has just been said but is not especially
worthrepeating,so thatthe exchangesbetween charactersseem like an
interconnectedsequence of inanities.
OlderDaughter.What'sthematter,Daddy?
Man1: Matter?. . . Nothing'sthematter.
OlderDaughter:
ortheotheris definitely
(weakening)
Something
thematter.
Man1: Oh nothing,yourMummywas sayingsomethingjust
now . . .
OlderDaughter.Whatwas she saying?
Man1: 1 don'tmeanher,I was sayingto her...
OlderDaughter.Whatwereyou saying?
Man1: 1wastalkingaboutyou.
OlderDaughter.Whatwereyou saying?
Womanreturns.
Man1: She'sback,she'lltell you herself.(SN257)
Yet this is not Beckett's aporia:Rakeshbelieves that "thewordlessness

between words can be very meaningfulbecause it bears the dramatic
tension within itself- its relative weight depends on the words that
come before and after.In itself, it is a temporarybreakin the passage of
words- an intervalthatconnectsthe words on both sides"(NV63). The
disconnectionsin Adhe adhurebuildtowardsa tense climax in which the
emotionaland physical violence between the older couple is fully laid
out in the finaldialoguebetween SavitriandJuneja.The family dynamic
appearshyper-realisticin one perspective,but in anotherit acquiresa
kind of ritualistic,predatoryfrenzy.
Whateverthe limits of female agency,however,Adheadhurereverses
conventionalgenderroles in a mannerthat was radicalfor the India of
1969, and is scarcely less radical in the early twenty-firstcentury.As
the cornerstonein the family's economic edifice, Savitridismantlesnot
only male authoritybut masculinity itself, becoming the first married
woman in majorpost-independencedramato brushaside conventional
sexualmores. She has boththe abilityandthe maturityto talk of choices
drivenby desire.Indeed,all threewomen in the play challengethe status
quo, the motherby looking for a way out, the older daughterthrough
her strangemarriage,and the younger daughterthroughher adolescent
sexuality. The multiplicationof male roles does not detractfrom the
focus on women, because in all fourroles the Man is eitheremasculated
or compromisedby his duplicity.
Adhe adhureis a showpiece of the double reach of modernism,into
the crevices of urbanIndianlife as well as the geopathic narrativesof
moderndramamorebroadly.The play also standsin for what is still the
dominant generic formation in post-independence Indian theatre- a
body of major urban drama that engages with the historical present
ratherthanthe received or imaginedpast, employs more or less realistic
performancestyles, and uses the private space of home as the testing
groundof not only familial but social and political relations.Since the
1980s, the decolonizing impulses in postcolonialism have sought to
erase this dramathrougha sweeping culturalcritiquethat establishes
premodern,non-urban,anti-realisticforms as "intrinsic,"and modern,
urban,realistic forms as "extrinsic"to Indian theatre.To outline the
modernistcounter-critiqueof this traditionalistreaction is beyond the
scope of this essay, but Rakesh's dramais one importantreason why a
significantnumberof Indianplaywrightscontinue to engage with the
rhythmsof ordinarylife in the city, confrontingthe fragmentationthat
Rakeshsaw as a hallmarkof modernity.
160
NOTES
1. Simon Gikandioffers one of the most forcefulrecentstatementsof this connection when he observes that
modernismrepresentsperhapsthe most intense and unprecedentedsite of
encounterbetween the institutionsof Europeanculturalproductionand the
culturalpracticesof colonizedpeoples.It is rareto finda centraltext in modern
literature,art, or ethnographythat does not deploy the otheras a significant
source, influence, or informing analogy.And the relationshipbetween the
institutionof modernismand these other culturalspaces is not, as was the
case in earlierperiods of Europeanart,decorative:it is dynamic,dialectical,
and constitutive of the field of Europeanand American culture ("Preface:
Modernismin the World,"Modernism/Modernity13, no. 3 [2006]: 421).
2. Gikandi,"Preface,"420; 421.
3. Susan StanfordFriedman,"PeriodizingModernism:PostcolonialModernities
and the Space/TimeBorders of Modernist Studies,"Modernism/Modernity13, no. 3
(2006): 428.
4. Susan StanfordFriedman,"Paranoia,Pollution,and Sexuality:Affiliationsbetween E. M. Forster's^Passage to IndiaandArundhatiRoy's TheGodof Small Things"
in Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism,Modernity,eds. LauraDoyle and LauraWinkiel
(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 2005), 246.
5. Doyle and Winkiel, Geomodernisms,3.
6. Rakesh'sinterviewwith CarloCoppola(titled"MohanRakesh")in theJournal
of SouthAsianLiterature9, nos. 2-3 (1973): 15-45, remainsthe most substantialprimary
sourcefor Rakeshto appearin the West.Fourotheressays, threeon Rakesh'sfictionand
one on Lahronke rajhans,also appearedin theJournalof SouthAsianLiteraturein 1973
and 1977-78. In my Theatresof Independence:Drama, Theory,and UrbanPerformance
in India since 1947 (Iowa City: Universityof Iowa Press, 2005), 225-43 and passim, I
discussRakeshin the contextsof post-independencemodels of authorship,textuality,and
multilingualism;as a postcolonialmodernistcommittedto contemporaneityand urban
experience;and as a theoristand practitionerof the postcolonialhistoryplay. Vasudha
Dalmia,Poetics, Plays, and Performances:thePolitics of ModernIndian Theatre(New
Delhi: OxfordUniversityPress,2006) containsa chaptertitled"NeitherHalf norWhole:
MohanRakeshand the ModernistQuest"(117-149).
7. Gikandi,"Preface,"420.
8. Friedman,"Paranoia,"247; Ariela Freedman,"Ganges Side of Modernism,"
in Geomodernisms:Race, Modernism,Modernity,eds. LauraDoyle and LauraWinkiel
(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 2005), 114-29.
9. See Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Cultural Imperialism and the Indo-English Novel
(University Park:Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993); Rosemary Marangoly
Fiction
George, ThePolitics of Home:Postcolonial Relocationsand Twentieth-Century
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996); Simon Gikandi,Reading the African
Novel: Essays in Interpretation(London:J. Currey,1987), and Writingin Limbo:Modernismand CaribbeanLiterature(Ithaca,NY: CornellUniversityPress, 1992); Tejumola
Olaniyan,Scars of Conquest/Masksof Resistance: TheInventionof CulturalIdentities
in African, African-American,and CaribbeanDrama (New York:Oxford University
Press, 1995); and JahanRamazani,The Hybrid Muse: Postcolonial Poetry in English
(Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 2001).
M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 16 1
10. RebeccaWalkowitz,CosmopolitanStyle: ModernismBeyond the Nation (New

York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 2006), 2; 7; 5.
11. Freedman,"GangesSide of Modernism,"117, 126.
12. Gikandi,"Preface,"422; andWalkowitz,CosmopolitanStyle, 10.
13. Doyle andWinkiel, Geomodernisms,6.
14. Friedman,"Periodizing,"429.
15. In the Online Catalogueof the Libraryof Congress (Worldcat),the keyword
adhunikayields a total of 2269 records, including 2142 books in multiple languages;
adhunikatayields 96 book-lengthworks.
16. Thatthis distinctionis made necessaryby the specific context of literatureand
art is clear in the OxfordEnglish Dictionary entry on "modernism,"where the term
is defined as "a usage, mode of expression, peculiarityof style, etc., characteristicof
moderntimes," and designates"the methods, style, or attitudeof modernartists,writers, architects,composers,etc."A "modernist"is, rathertautologically,"a supporteror
follower of modernways or methods;an adherentof modernism."
17. DipeshChakrabarty,
ProvincializingEurope:Postcolonial ThoughtandHistorical Difference(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 2000), 148.
18. SudiptaKaviraj,"TheTwo Historiesof LiteraryCulturein Bengal,"in Literary
Culturesin History:Reconstructionsfrom SouthAsia, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Berkeley:
Universityof CaliforniaPress, 2003), 558.
19. See Govind Chatak,Adhuniknatakka masiha MohanRakesh[MohanRakesh,
TheMessiahof ModernTheatre](Delhi:Indraprastha
Prakashan,1975), andTrilokchand
Tulsi, Bharatenduaur adhunikata:Bharat mem adhunikataka sutrapat [Bharatendu
andModernity:The Inceptionof Modernityin India](Hoshiyarpur:Vishveshvarananda
VaidikShodh Sansthan,1988).
20. See Urmila Mishra,Adhunikataaur Mohan Rakesh [Modernityand Mohan
Rakesh] (Varanasi:VishvavidyalayaPrakashan,1977); PrabhakarMachve, Modernity
and ContemporaryIndianLiterature(New Delhi: Chetna, 1978); SukritaPaul Kumar,
Conversationson Modernism,WithReferenceto English,Hindi, and UrduFiction (New
Delhi: IndianInstituteof Advanced Study,Shimla, in Association with Allied Publishers, 1990); Nalini Natarajan,Womanand Indian Modernity:Readings of Colonial and
PostcolonialNovels (New Orleans:UniversityPressof the South,2002); andAbu Sayid
Ayub,Adhunikata Rabindranath[Modernismand Tagore],trans.AmitavaRay (New
Delhi: SahityaAkademi, 1995).
2 1. Kaviraj,"TheTwo Histories,"558.
22. SudhiPradhan,MarxistCulturalMovementin India:ChroniclesandDocuments,
vol. 1 (Calcutta:NationalBook Agency, 1979-1985), 134; 136.
23. Pradhan,vol. 2, 162.
24. FredricJameson,A SingularModernity:Essays on the Ontologyof the Present
(London:Verso,2002), 197.
25. LindaHutcheon, The Post Always Rings Twice:the Postmodernandthe Postcolonial,"TextualPractice 8 (1994): 205.
26. LindaHutcheon,"'Circlingthe Downspout of Empire':Post-Colonialismand
Postmodernism,"Ariel 20, no. 4 (1989): 152.
27. Hutcheon,"Circling,"151.
28. Kwame AnthonyAppiah, In My Father s House: Africa in the Philosophy of
Culture(New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1992), 155.
29. Friedman,"Periodizing,"427.
162
30. Mohan Rakesh, Natya-vimarsha[Meditationson Theatre],ed. Jaidev Taneja

(New Delhi: National School of Drama, 2003); hereaftercited in the text as NV. All
translationsfrom the Hindi are mine.
3 1. MohanRakesh,Bakalamkhud[InHis OwnWords](Delhi:Rajpal,1974), 93-94;
hereaftercited in the text as BK.
32. ParthaChatterjee,"TalkingAboutOurModernityin Two Languages,"in A Possible India: Essays in Political Criticism(New Delhi: OxfordUniversityPress, 1997),
263; 269; 270.
33. Rakesh, Sahitya aur sanskriti [Literatureand Culture](Delhi: Radhakrishna
Prakashan,1990), 109.
34. Rakesh, "Lookingaroundas a Playwright,"Sangeet Natak 3 (October 1966):
18.
35. Ibid., 19.
36. T. S. Eliot, The CompletePoems and Plays, 1909-1950 (New York:Harcourt
Brace, 1980), 121.
37. Rakesh,"TheatrewithoutWalls,"SangeetNatak 6 (October-December1967):
67.
38. Ibid., 67.
39. T. S. Eliot, "Traditionand the IndividualTalent,"in TheNortonAnthologyof
English Literature, 8thed, gen ed. StephenGreenblatt,Vol. F: The TwentiethCentury
andAfter (New York:W. W. Norton,2006), 2320.
40. Rakesh,"LookingAround,"18-19.
41. Rakesh, Mohan Rakesh ke sampurna natak [The Complete Plays of Mohan
Rakesh],ed. NemichandraJain(Delhi: Rajpal, 1933), 331; hereaftercited in the text as
SN.
42. The idea of "a vague, culturallydeterminedsymbology of home"as one of the
"foundationaldiscourses"of moderndramaappearsin Chaudhuri,who also coins the
term "geopathology"to designate "the problemof place" that eruptsin realist theatre
of the late nineteenthcentury,and "unfoldsas an incessantdialoguebetweenbelonging
and exile, home and homelessness."Chaudhuriarguesthat "the dramaticdiscourseof
home is articulatedthroughtwo main principles,which structurethe plot as well as the
plays' accounts of subjectivityand identity:a victimage of location and a heroismof
departure.The formerprincipledefinesplace as the protagonist'sfundamentalproblem,
leading her or him to a recognitionof the need for (if not an actual enactmentof) the
latter"(Una Chaudhuri,Staging Place: the Geographyof ModernDrama [AnnArbor:
Universityof MichiganPress, 1996], xii). In Theatresof Independence,282-85, 1discuss
the modificationof these principlesin post-independenceIndianrealisttheatre.
43. ArjunAppadurai,"Body, Property,and Fire in Urban India,"AmericanAnthropologyAssociation meeting, Washington,D. C, November 1997; also quoted in
Chakrabarty,
Provincializing, 182.
44. Chakrabarty,
Provincializing,156.
45. Ibid., 141.

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The South Central Modern Language Association

Mohan Rakesh, Modernism, and the Postcolonial Present

1. Geomodernism and the Indian-Language Playwright

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 137

chronology of Euro-Americanmodernism (circa 1890-1940 in most

SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

eth centuryauthors,across the spectrumof genres and languages.As a

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 139

dencewriters.I thenmove to a discussionof the modernistpositionsthat

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the beginningof the twentiethcenturyto those of W. G. Sebald,Salman

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 14 1

writtenliteratureshave existed for a millennium.Sanskrit,the classical

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Rakesh's theoreticalargumentsabout literatureand theatre,and in his

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 143

tinues to regardmodernismas a specific aesthetic-politicalexpression

SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

individualauthorsanywherealong the spectrum,althoughTagoreis the

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 145

(1955-1975) duringwhich suchplaywrightsas DharamvirBharati,Vijay

SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

Hutcheonadmits,however,thatthe complicitpolitics of postmodernism

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 147

age of forty-sevenin 1972. Collectedposthumously,most recently in a

SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 149

or all of our literaturebegins to look shallow and backward"(BK 85).

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Whatis this Indianness?Is Indiantraditionan inert static

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 15 I

cut off fromit becauseHindi lacks the kind of well-developedtheatrein

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writerlyagonsymptomaticof highmodernismdoes notprecludeRakesh's

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 153

SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

Notwithstandingthese theoreticaljustifications,Rakeshdid come to

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 155

SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

her desire for escape. Binni (OlderDaughter)has recently eloped with

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 157

normsof familial conductobsolete, and places the urbanIndianfamily

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 159

Yet this is not Beckett's aporia:Rakeshbelieves that "thewordlessness

SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

M. RAKESH,MODERNISM,&THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT/ DHARWADKER 16 1

10. RebeccaWalkowitz,CosmopolitanStyle: ModernismBeyond the Nation (New

SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

30. Mohan Rakesh, Natya-vimarsha[Meditationson Theatre],ed. Jaidev Taneja

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