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COLLOQUIUM PAPER

A Framework of Comparison:
Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata and
Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug
MRINALINI SINGHA
B.Des., Film & Video Communication (Semester V)

GUIDE: SHILPA DAS, Ph.D.


Senior Faculty, Interdisciplinary Design Studies

INTRODUCTION perspective but rather contained within themselves multiple


Indian storytelling traditions have always experimented with layers of different stories—gods telling stories about human
narratives embedded within narratives be it the folklore of the beings; human beings narrating stories about parrots; and
Kathasaritsagara or the intriguingly complex and colossal parrots relating stories about gods—all with little care for
Indian epic, the Mahabharata. As goes with the tradition of oral modern notions of chronology.
storytelling, these narratives were not dispersed from a singular

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Fig. 1: Frames illustrating the contents page and structure for this paper.

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With regard to its contents, this paper examines two postmodern reinterpreted traditional myths through modern themes and
adaptations of the Mahabharata—(a) Dharamvir Bharati’s Hindi forms (“Epic Play”).
play Andha Yug (1954) which has been translated into English by
Alok Bhalla and (b) Peter Brook’s film The Mahabharata (1989). On the other hand, Brook’s film The Mahabharata, which also has
Additionally, and perhaps more interestingly for a designer, it the undertones of post-war sentiments, focuses more on
must be underlined at the outset that frames constitute an bringing an Indian epic to the world audience and making it
integral part of filmmaking and this paper’s structure draws universal in its appeal.
from the tradition of embedded frames.
While Brook attempts to create a relative universality of the epic,
Inspired by the section ‘Contents of Anagram’ in Maya Deren’s Bharati takes this universality of the Mahabharata as granted.
experimental work An Anagram of Ideas, the contents page for Andha Yug calls for a more imaginative involvement from the
this paper and by extension, its structure, has been depicted audience than Brook asks of his. This is because Bharati’s Andha
through the medium of frames (Fig. 1): ‘The Outer Frame’ that Yug is a written play; Brook’s is filmed theatre. The latter relies on
views the works, ‘The Middle Frame’ that is enmeshed into the the visual diversity of its actors’ ethnicities, while the former fits
works, and ‘The Inner Frame’ that abstracts ideas from the into the context of postcolonial India, but relies on its universal
works. Keeping in with the narrative framework of the relevance of ideas through the theatre of the mind.
Mahabharata, these frames also interact with and influence
each other. Those familiar with the texts could also try reading In fact, both texts are bridged by the common medium of
this paper from innermost to outermost, panning out from the theatre. Andha Yug was originally written in Hindi for the radio
void of abstraction to the tangible fabric of the works. and later translated to English. It has had numerous theatre
performances in both languages since.
1. THE OUTER FRAME: OF VIEWING
To view the works, one must understand the fabric of their medium, Conversely, The Mahabharata was written by Jean-Claude
how they came to be and what context they were made in. Carriere and was first directed as a theatrical performance by
Brook, who later made it into a film.
Both Bharati’s Andha Yug and Brook’s Mahabharata are set on
the age old premise of the Mahabharata, the Hindu epic which is This brings one to question (a) the textual similarities and
seen as “the prime example of the ninth rasa, Santarasa, the differences of film, theatre, and literature and (b) the creative
aesthetic motif of the peace of religious experience” (Sullivan 3). loss that would occur through translation and changing
mediums.
Interestingly however, neither of the two works emphasizes
religious experience. This paper argues that rather (a) the two Combining theatre and film, Brook’s The Mahabharata
works provide a socio-cultural critique of their own unique radicalizes cinematic space by using theatrical set design that
contexts using the premise of the Mahabharata as a skeleton for does not establish space and time. Its performative politics relies
new arguments and (b) both works illustrate a postmodern more heavily on the spoken word than on cinematic elements,
attitude of experimentalism in their medium. bringing through the oral tradition of the ancient epic. The
relationship between spectator and the spectacle differ in the
Contextually, Andha Yug was written in post-Partition India and two mediums as observed in Pattnaik’s essay A Dramatic Film:
is recognized as the first postcolonial literary classic. “Andha Yug “While theatre is momentary, in that it is a single performance,
is not a rewriting of history. Through the language of the past it is where the spectator witnesses a final and direct relation with the
a poetic expression of an understanding of its own age” actor, the filmic set is an artificial device, which the actor
(Dharwadker 187). Until then, the Mahabharata as an epic stood inhabits repeatedly in the presence of a camera.”
for heroic anti-colonialism and nationalism.
The creative loss both pieces have undergone is immense but
Andha Yug marked a critical moment for this problematic view very different in nature. For example, Brook’s The Mahabharata
and focuses instead on the savagery of death and the futility of begins with Vyasa and Ganesha telling a boy about the war. In the
war. It placed greater emphasis on the psychological impact on theater performance, “The boy is thus a representative of the
those left behind after the war than on the grandeur of the war audience within the drama. We watch him watching the play
itself. This play is also experimental in nature as it combines the from the platform onstage. Throughout the whole drama, the
mythological tales of the Indian epic with elements of Greek links between us and the boy, the boy and the play, the play and us
tragedy. In fact, Bharati belongs to the Theatre of the Roots remain elastic and open to redefinition, with the earth as a
Movement that emerged after Indian Independence; this common ground and anchor” (Brooks 126–127). Although the film
movement was spurred by the search for a new identity and it also breaks the fourth wall, it does not allow for such an intimate

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Fig. 2: Timeline: Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug. The shaded portion in black represents the version studied for this paper.

Fig. 3: Timeline: Peter Brook’s film The Mahabharata. The shaded portion in black represents the version studied for this paper.

sharing of space, thus altering the experience. Conversely, the 2. THE MIDDLE FRAME: OF ENMESHMENT
cinematic spectator gets the most ideal view of the enactments. Should one get enmeshed into the very fabric of a work, one would be
able to examine the texture of time, space, and structure.
Andha Yug on the other hand, faces the perils of loss through
translations. Alok Bhalla took up the task of translating the work The epic itself has many beginnings; the works being analyzed in
to English because he saw inadequacy in the previous this paper have only one each. In Brook’s film, the first frame is
translations. According to him, his students who had read the of Vyasa dictating his poem on the Mahabharata to Ganesha
work in English reacted differently to each of its characters. who transcribes it; the second is of the Mahabharata carrying
out itself. The film has two endings; the inner frame closes with
As seen above, the audience, and Indians in particular, are very the Pandavas reuniting in hell and the outer frame ends with the
critical of the works inspired by this epic. Brook received finishing of the transcription and the handing over of the book
backlash for the orientalism and forced universality his film to the boy. The line between these frames (Fig. 4) is blurry as
propagated. It has been observed that: “One should not, under Ganesha in the form of Krishna and Vyasa, are also characters in
cover of universality of theme or character, undercut the the Mahabharata. This makes the film self-reflexive in nature.
intrinsic core of how The Mahabharata’s characters function
within the world of which they are a part of” (Dasgupta 14). On the other hand, Andha Yug’s, outer frame (Fig. 5) centers on
conditions in the Kaurava kingdom on the eighteenth and last
Conversely, Brook explains in his book how relatability was an day of the Mahabharata war. As an afterword, time gallops
important factor for the audience: “The first principle is to start forward 36 years later, ending with Krishna’s death. “Andha Yug
on the level of the audience, very simply. If in The Mahabharata makes two critical structural choices to maintain its atmosphere
we had copied Indian forms, a god would come on as in of unrelieved suffering: one, by beginning with the end of the
Kathakali, with long fingernails and fantastic makeup. However, epic war, it bypasses the heroic moments and moves directly to
even if for a second, the physical beauty of it would engage the the experience of irrevocable loss, and two, by focusing on the
audience, the second afterwards it would seem remote and in no
way connected with real life.”

He was criticized for eliminating the nuances of the Indian


context and white-washing the religious and cultural
importance the Mahabharata encompasses. For example, the
epic ends with the Sacrifice of the Horse which restores
harmony in the universe once again. Brook’s version, in which
the Kauravas go to heaven and the Pandavas to hell, has no place
in the endless cycle of birth and rebirth, the crux of Hindu
thought (Dasgupta 15–16).

Overall, in spite of being postmodern contemporaries, the two


works represent very different ideologies and kinds of
experimentalism; they face different problems and are for
different audiences. Fig. 4: Narrative frame for Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata.

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defeated Kauravas than the victorious Pandavas, it deals with In spite of this, the proximity of the war echoes through the
political and emotional traumas that can no longer find entirety of the play. Andha Yug is interluded by a scene that takes
resolution” (Dharwadker 186–203). place in a limbo-like Kal Yug, where, the dead mendicant
interacts with the spirits of other characters who are still alive in
The inner narrative frame is constituted by Sanjaya who retells the play. “It makes all the characters opine how they perceive
the events of the battlefield to those who did not leave for the themselves in relation to the reality of the moment. Since the
war. In a way, Sanjaya is a living radio of the time, the same reality is a composite picture, so it changes with the change in its
medium that Andha Yug was originally made for. This mind’s elemental compositional proportions which gives birth to
theatre that Sanjaya evokes literally comes to an end in the multiple versions given by different characters” (Sharma 180).
middle of Andha Yug as he loses his sight of vision. The walls of
these two frames are non-permeable as opposed to Brook’s While Kal Yug in Andha Yug is a trance-like state that allows for
version. the living and dead to interact, it is not the final destination of
the narration but more of a passing experience. In Brook’s film,
Andha Yug also has a parallel ‘sung narrative’ (called kathagayan) however, heaven and hell are seen as such: destinations at the
that takes place in the beginning and end of each act through the end of the journey of life.
voices of the soldiers in the corridors that provides narrative
continuity to the five self-contained acts of the play that each Thus, the narrative structures of Brook’s The Mahabharata and
represents a different motif (Dharwadker 190). Bharati’s play Andha Yug are quite astoundingly the inverse of
each other. In the former, the storyteller makes the outer frame;
It can be noted that in Brook’s film, the characters of the story in the latter, the storyteller makes the inner frame. The
and the listeners of the story are separated more through storyteller in the first is an active character of the story, while the
temporal distance as opposed to Andha Yug, where they are storyteller of the second is a passive observer and vehicle of
separated more through spatial distance. The former tells us that information. Frames are used to connect different times in the
the epic battle happened sometime in the distant past and that film and different spaces in the play. The former sees heaven and
the clans were ancestors of the boy. Vyasa, author and active hell as destinations at the end of life; however, the play depicts
character, who starts in the present, is also said to be an ancestor hell as a limbo which comes not as an end but as a dream-like
of the Pandava and Kaurava clans. This apparent circularity can state connecting the living and the dead.

3. THE INNER FRAME: OF ABSTRACTION


Moving across the textured fabric, one is aware of its holes and of
its knots that make up for thematic elements.

This section deals with the overarching themes and connections


that exist within and between the texts: from the depiction of
belief systems and abstract concepts to the societal
representations.

3.1 Take on War


he portrayal of war in both works is very different since Brook’s
film focuses on what lead to the war and the happenings on the
battlefield itself. The devastation caused by war is not
emphasized upon as much, though the war is not portrayed as an
Fig. 5: Narrative frames for Andha Yug. inevitable occurrence. On the other hand, Bharati’s Andha Yug
works towards evoking pathos in the reader through its
also be seen in other ancient texts such as the Rig Veda. A emphasis on post-war trauma and the futility of the unrighteous
nonlinear time frame that was followed in ancient India brings war. Pathos is best depicted through the change in Dhritarashtra,
to question the genealogy of the clans. In the film, the characters who, numbed in the first act, “can’t see the events his [Sanjaya’s]
are not temporally restricted in their interactions. “The absence words create” (Bharati 34) and this is changed by the third act
of a predetermined threshold between here and there liberates when he says: “today I felt as if those wounds of war Sanjaya has
the flows of dramatic energy” (Brook 127). described so often have been inflicted on my body” (66–67). A
parallel is drawn between the thousands of soldiers who left for
On the other hand, in Andha Yug, the location is set as the war in grandeur with the army of Ashwatthama, blinded with
Kaurava kingdom while the inner story is set in the battlefield. rage: “A madman as the commander of an army of two-old

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Kripacharya and cowardly Kritavarma. Such is the plight of the that lies beyond the boundaries
invisible Kauravas!” (83). of my selfhood

I realised that only today. (35)


Kripacharya talks of the “heroic deeds” of the war but with an
undertone of irony for, “Drona was old and unarmed but did Dhritarashtra brings out an important observation about truth:
Dhrishtadyumna spare his life? Did we take pity on Abhimanyu there exists a truth not just for the individual self, but there also
when he was alone and trapped by seven valiant heroes?” (63). exists a final truth in the world.
Brook’s film depicts this as well on the night of Abhimanyu’s death.
Both works have also depicted one character who fights for the
3.2 Good and Evil, Dharma and Selfhood other side in the war. In Brook’s The Mahabharata, it is Karana,
For many, the Mahabharata is about the victory of good over evil, who, on finding out that he is in fact the eldest of the Pandavas,
symbolized by the victory of the Pandavas over the Kauravas. still chooses to honour his allegiance with the Kauravas. In
However, neither of the two works being analyzed depicts the two Andha Yug, this character is Yuyutsu, who was “the only one of
clans with such polarity. In Brook’s film, it is the Kauravas who go the Kaurava clan who has held his head high with pride” (72) as
to heaven and the Pandavas who go to hell. This is because the he fought for the Pandavas and chose “the side of truth” (71).
Kauravas die on the holy grounds of Kurukshetra. The Pandavas Yuyutsu is shown to regret his decision:
on the other hand, were plagued by the adharma they had It would have been better
resorted to in order to win the battle. The complex notion of if I had
dharma in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita suggests that accepted
one should look beyond one’s self-righteousness and do one’s the untruth.
....................................
duty in this world. In Brook’s film, dharma is looked upon In the final analysis
positively and seen as the right thing to do. whether you uphold truth

or untruth
In Andha Yug, the “dance of war” (86) between the crow and the you are damned. (75)
owl can be seen as an allegory of the Pandavas and Kauravas.
Although the crow would usually represent evil, it is attacked Not only does Yuyutsu’s mother refuse to accept him but he is
and killed by the owl while the former was sleeping, thus also rendered voiceless by the mob that is frightened of him;
meeting an unfair end. Yuyutsu eventually commits suicide.

However, the concept of dharma in Andha Yug is both berated and 3.3 Youth and Time
celebrated. On the one hand, Gandhari, who had lost faith, cried In Andha Yug, Ashwathama’s blind rage lands him on the
out that she was not always blind, that she “had seen the ways of “endless shores of desolate time” (64), forever living in the
the world and knew that dharma, duty and honour were illusions” present. A parallel can be made with Amba’s character in Brook’s
(37). Whereas on the other, she had cautioned Duryodhana: film, whose desire to take revenge from Bhisma keeps her young.
O, Fool, where there is dharma Bhisma, on the other hand, because of his celibacy, could choose
There is victory. the time of his death but would age nonetheless. Sanjaya too, in
There was no dharma on either side. Andha Yug, is immortal because of the tragic truth that he has to
Each was inspired by their blind self-interest. (37–38) tell while the god, Krishna, “is the embodiment of time as it
flows in its stately dignity”(92).
Selfhood is looked upon negatively in both works. In Brook’s
film, the Pandavas display considerable selflessness through 3.4 Depiction of Divinity
their bond with each other, but they cave into selfhood and Krishna is a reincarnation of Vishnu and the most beloved of
adharma by using sly means to win the war. Bharati’s play voices Indian gods. He is seen as a naughty but an endearing figure who
this through Balarama who says, “. . . the Pandavas who are can be both reprimanded and loved. In these two works,
celebrating their victory with conch shells will also be destroyed however, this is not the case. Krishna is shown as the central
by adharma” (80). He also gives the description of an unjust rule turning force in both works. Andha Yug expresses the silent
by them. reverberations felt of him throughout and even verbally: “Yes,
there were still frail threads of honor which held men together
In Andha Yug, it is Dhritarashtra who realizes that he was but good and evil were so intrinsically interlocked that only
blinded by selfhood saying: Krishna had the courage to unravel them” (26). Brook’s film does

Today so visually in its depiction of how it is Krishna’s hand (Fig. 6)

I realised that moves Arjuna’s arrow forward in time to kill Bhisma.

that there is a truth

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The film represents Krishna physically in the form of a human it was I who was wounded
being and the difficulty in doing so is described by Maurice it was I who fell to the ground.
........................................................
Benichou: “It is very difficult to bring mythical characters down to If I am life
earth, to relate them to things we know today. Peter gave me some then, Mother
excellent advice: he told me to think of Krishna as someone who I am also death. (123)
intercedes here and there in a conflict asking what’s going on on There is one other god depicted in each of the two works. In
either side like a real person, while actually knowing everything Brook’s film, it is Ganesha who takes up a comic form with an
himself, like a god ” (qtd. in Brooks 127). elephant mask. He turns into Krishna by taking off the mask,
connoting that Brook did not want his audience to maintain a
There are two instances in Brook’s film when Krishna is seen by suspension of disbelief. In Andha Yug, it is Shankara whose
Dhritarashtra and Arjuna causing the former to say that he has presence is depicted by the turning off of lights on stage as
seen the world and the latter to be enlightened by the opposed to a gentle shadow.
conversation that makes up the Bhagavad Gita. However, the
audience is not shown these spectacles. 3.5 Representation of Disability
However, with regard to being humane, Brook’s Krishna fares very History has not been kind towards those with disabilities and
poorly: “The Homeric compaction is felt most poignantly in the usually portrays them as helpless characters. This can be said for
characterization of Krishna, who comes across more as a Ulysses Dhritarashtra who is shown as a weak character in both works.
than as a personification of the god Vishnu. Within the confines The Mahabharata conforms to such an opinion on disability
of The Mahabharata’s grandiose themes, the recklessness of subliminally through the fate of Eklavya, the devout disciple of
Brook’s Krishna is oddly out of place” (Dasgupta 13). Dronacharya who taught himself archery under a mud statue of
the latter. Eklavya cut off this thumb as gurudakshina (offering to
Andha Yug begins with a similar Krishna as the only one the teacher). This was asked of him to ensure that Arjuna would
“dispassionate and detached” (26) enough to “be the savior of be the best archer in the world, a problematic outcome that

Fig. 6: Time stops as Krishna moves the arrow forward.

their future” (26). This image of his changes only once the suggests that a person with a disability cannot match up to the
audience hears him speak. He is not seen and it is only a shadow skills of an abled person. Andha Yug on the other hand, uses
of his that is shown on stage—an interesting way to depict a god sensory disabilities allegorically to represent more
without trivializing him into a mere human being. In another encompassing ideas. Blindness is an overarching motif; for the
scene, a feather drops from Krishna’s crown, poignantly rule of a blind king, there was darkness that could not
representing humanity losing faith in him. Krishna is then differentiate between good and evil:
shown as a more humane character through this reply to THE NARRATOR: Blindness rules this age not reason and
Gandhari’s curse: blindness shall prevail in the end. (27)
In this terrible war of eighteen days
I am the only one who died a million times. Every In Andha Yug, a soldier who is deaf and mute tries in an
time a soldier was struck down incomprehensible manner to cheer on for Dhritarashtra.
every time a soldier fell to the ground it was I
who was struck down There is also the interesting example of Gandhari who enforced

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blindness upon herself by covering her eyes with a blindfold. Karana. Eklavya was rendered disabled for his devotion to a
This was done so that she would not be more abled than her guru who would not even take him under his wing for Eklavya
husband, depicting the matrix that entangles gender and was not a Kshatriya. Instances of discrimination are also shown
disability. One could also see her act of blindfolding herself as a against Karana when he was to fight Arjuna, for Karana thought
rebellion against a world she chose never to seen again, for it he was a charioteer’s son and a Kshatriya could challenge only
deceived her into marrying a man she had never met. another Kshatriya in a duel. But of course, Karana later finds out
that Surya, the sun god was his father and that the former is the
In neither of the two works does Gandhari take off her blindfold. eldest of the Pandavas, whom he had chosen to fight against.
In Brook’s The Mahabharata, she is ordered to do so by her
husband but lies to him by describing the world from her In Andha Yug, the commoner is voiced through the parallel sung
darkness. In Andha Yug, she desires to do so in order to “gaze narrative of the guards walking up and down the Kaurava
upon Ashwatthama and transform his body into a bright kingdom. These are the soldiers who have not gone out for war
diamond” (105). Her characterization in the former makes her and they voice their lack of purpose in life and the futility of the
fearful of taking off her blindfold while the same in the latter purpose of war. These guards are nameless entities. They can
depicts her as more powerful. symbolize any of the ruled classes who exhibit uncertainty
about their future, for Krishna would take responsibility for all
3.6 Representation of the Common People of them, but they, with no fate and they, with the status, “only
The Mahabharata is also the tale of a family war fought between slaves” (43), would be left pacing the “desolate corridors of
the royal minorities that dragged the whole world down to death’s kingdom” (44) even after death.
ashes. It is centered on the Brahmin and Kshatriya castes
representing the upper strata of society. In Peter Brook’s The CONCLUSION
Mahabharata, two such characters are depicted: Eklavya and The elegantly structured narratives of both Dharamvir Bharati’s

Fig. 7: Bhisma on a death bed of arrows.

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play Andha Yug and Peter Brook’s film The Mahabharata are
unique. Each is layered with decisive reasoning that engages its Dharwadker, Aparna Bhargava. Theatres of Independence: Drama, Theory, and

respective audience, and it is through this technique that each Urban Performance in India since 1947. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,

narrative communicates its key message. Peter Brook’s film The 2008. Print.

Mahabharata is a telling that stays away from the moral


preachings of the epic. It focuses on the Pandava-Kaurava Pattnaik, Sonali. “A Dramatic Film: Performative Politics in Peter Brook’s

rivalry while making space for the substories of other characters Mahabharata.” Narratives of Indian Cinema. Ed. Manju Jain. New Delhi:

as well. Andha Yug strongly celebrates the grey zones focusing on Primus, 2014. Academia.edu. Web. 24 Jul. 2017.

the stories of Ashwatthama and Gandhari.


Sullivan, Bruce M. “The Mahabharata: Perspectives on Its Ends and Endings.”

Thus, Andha Yug expected its audience to know the story and International Journal of Hindu Studies 15.1 (2011): 1–7 JSTOR. Web. 22 Jul. 2017.

characters beforehand, whereas Brook’s The Mahabharata


requires the audience to have some previous knowledge of the The Mahabharata. Dir. Peter Brook. 1989. DVD.

epic. There are scenes in Brook’s film which make more sense if
the reader knows the back story involved. Bhisma’s death bed for
example, is a bed of arrows (Fig. 7) which looks grand in itself
but actually represents the revenge Gandhari’s clan wanted to
bestow upon the Kauravas.

The works are relevant today for they speak of issues and portray
a world very relatable to the present be it though its universalism
or the post-War world we live in. In the words of Maurice
Benichou, “The Mahabharata is a huge epic but at the same time
it’s the story of each of us” (qtd. in Brook 128).

WORKS CITED
Ahuja, Chaman. “Epic Play.” Spectrum. The Tribune, 8 May 2005. Web. 12 Dec.

2018.

Bharati, Dharamvir. Andha Yug (1954), trans. Alok Bhalla. New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 2010. Print.

Brook, Peter. The Empty Space. London: Penguin Books, 2008. Print.

Dasgupta, Gautam. “The Mahabharata: Peter Brook’s “Orientalism”.”

Performing Arts Journal 10.3 (1987): 9–16 JSTOR. Web. 21 Jul. 2017.

Deren, Maya. An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film. Yonkers, New York:

The Alicat Book Shop Press, 1946. Web. 19 Dec. 2018.

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