PANJIM, FEB 8
Despite a sore throat, Girish Karnad kept a packed Dinanath Mangeshkar Auditorium in Kala Academy riveted to their seats with his vibrant lecture on impact of colonialism on art and culture of India. It was history at its very best as Karnad made it as alive as sailing downstream a river of time that spanned over two millennia.
His was the first in a series of lectures by eminent personalities organised as a part of 3rd D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas, which is an annual feature held in the month of February in Panjim. The festival was inaugurated by Chief Minister Digambar Kamat in presence of the Chief Secretary Sanjay Shrivastava and Director of Art and Culture Prasad Lolienkar on Monday.
Girish Raghunath Karnad who has won several awards — including the Jnanpeeth, Padma Shree and Padma Bhushan — is a multi-dimensional personality who is a playwright, writer, actor, director, critic, activist, to name a few.   
According to Karnad, the word ‘culture’ itself when translated to sanskruti gives rise to implications that are difficult to follow as there is no precise parallel of world culture in our vocabulary.
He said that three major cities of Mumbai, Calcutta and Madras which were started as trading outposts by the British were very different from the other urban centres as these new trading outposts had no connection with the hinterland and this traumatic shift is exemplified in the movie Umaro Jaan.
Speaking on impact of colonialism on traditional theatre Karnad said there was no separation between the audience and the actors and concept of proscenium and that of tickets was introduced by the British. According to Karnad, commodification of this art form had far reaching effect as not only it eroded the artists’ freedom and individuality, it also shaped the expectations of the audience as they had paid for the performance -- previously the audience had only aesthetic risk, now economic risk was also introduced to entertainment. A major impact of these changes was that element of improvisation that was the hallmark of the traditional theatre was stifled.
When the native population saw that the membsaabs acted in the British plays, it also paved way for participation of women in Indian theatre. Parsi community was the first to make foray into modern Indian theatre. Interestingly, as the Parsi community knew that their audience was Hindu, their first plays were based in Hindu mythology written by Muslim writers as they were more proficient in Hindustani.
Shakespearean influence is starkly evident in Indian plays as not only India had to find its own playwright who would match up to his stature, which it eventually did in Kalidas,  even the translations had Shakespearean influence as summed up by comment of Anna Salai Kiroskar who said that he wanted to create Ras as created by Shakespeare. Eventually the Indian theatre was cut off from it roots and it became an upper caste vocation.
In the area of painting the British influence, according to Karnad, is more clear and stark as the British were convinced that Indians did not know how to draw as the traditional Indian paintings lacked perspective. They started learning centres in Calcutta, Lahore, Mumbai and Madras with fee and equipment. These centres were accessible exclusively to anglicised middle class and were never entered by the artisans. This resulted in new breed of Indian artist who were middle class bhadralok, people like Rabindranath Tagore and Jamini Roy, to name a few. Indian art had to find its own idiom and this led to ‘spiritualisation’ of Indian art; and to be spiritualised the art had to be sexless.
 Rabindranath Tagore saw this as a problem and saw this trend as pointless and eventually disassociated himself from it. According to Karnad, Indian painting and sculpture were virtually strangled due to colonial rule.
Middle class foray into the art of dancing also resulted in its sanitisation as dancing was stripped of the erotic element. Kanrad said Bharatnatyam was originally the dance of devdasis – temple dancers who were wedded to God. Rukmini Devi Arundale transformed it to a dance of upper classes, bereft of erotic element. In Rukmini’s school of dance no devdasi was ever employed as a teacher. This invited a barb from Balasaraswati, a dancer, who said “upper castes have taken our profession and left us only our art”.
Karnad also said colonialism virtually killed Indian architecture. Lutyens and Baker hated Indian architecture and this is so evident in their conception and execution of New Delhi, where no elements of Indian architecture were incorporated nor any skilled Indian artisans employed. When Le Corbusier was asked to design the city of Chandigarh, he was instructed by the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who wanted this city to be “uninfluenced by any tradition of past.” This was practically the death knell of traditional Indian architecture. In recent times architects like Charles Correa have tried to revive the traditional architecture but only to an extent as his comment “that he did not want to dig into the grave” reflected the dead state of traditional architecture.
Field of music offers a somewhat different story as according to Karnad music is in Indian blood thanks to Bhakti and Sufi movements where music acted a bridge to divinity even when doing mundane tasks. With recording of music in 1902 and appearance of gramophone, the music which was the indulgence of the rich and upper caste became accessible to general population and advent of radio and cassettes transmitted it to virtually every town and village and it became a part of daily life. In 1931 when the sound was wedded to cinema it was said that the ‘western films began to talk and the Indian films began to sing’.
According to Karnad colonisation has taken a new shape called ‘Globalisation’ and English is slowly subsuming all other languages. How potent is this threat to our culture? Karnad says while English may be necessary evil and a common unifying mode of communication, our mother tongues will always have a special place in our lives as “when it comes to laughing and crying you need your mother tongue”.
Globalisation has also led to proliferation and profound impact of audio visual media in our lives. In 1991 when the satellite TV was introduced in India, people feared that Rupert Murdoch will take over the Indian skies but these fears have proven to be largely misplaced and evident by a thriving vernacular media and our languages has never been more alive.
Karnad also talked about positive impacts of colonialism, referring to the first Kannada dictionary published by the Missionaries, and introduction of the printing press.
While new developments were taking place in the urban centres, the other part of India, its villages became ‘centres of ignorance’ Girish Karnad hopes that the stark disparities created by the colonial rule will eventually be bridged by the electronic media and computers; a hope that he feels D D Kosambi would have wholeheartedly endorsed.