Mahatma Gandhi’s political and personal life has always been a subject chewed by the theatre for its interesting trappings. Shoma A. Chatterji takes an in-depth look at the plays across languages that delve into the life of the “Father of the Nation” and his troubled relationship with eldest son.
Gandhi is venerated as the “Father of the Nation”. But how was he as the biological father of his four sons? Did he do his duty as a father towards them? Or did he sacrifice/surrender his natural fatherhood in the service of the nation? His wife Kasturba Gandhi accused him of not being a good father but did not go against him in his struggle for freedom and thereafter. She remained beside him right through his phase in South Africa and even cleaned toilets much against her wishes.
Of the four sons, it was the eldest, Harilal, who stood against him right through, accusing him of bias against his own children and placing his service to the nation before them. However, it is interesting to note his relationship with Harilal, the eldest son, through some writings and several plays right across the global map.
The year 1970’s catalogue of copyright entries in the Library of Congress in Washington DC lists a staggering 20 more plays on Gandhi, including one titled The Skinny Brown Man In The White Loin-Cloth. 1969 marked Gandhi’s birth centenary, but there appears to be no records of any of these efforts on the professional stage, according to an article by Vikram Phukan titled Gandhi – A Stage Favourite (The Mint, 20th August, 2016).
The 1979 opera Satyagraha composed by Philip Glass was drawn from the Bhagavad Gita, sung in Sanskrit. It was a meditation on Gandhi’s formative years in South Africa, where he developed his philosophy of non-violent resistance. The best staging is the 2007 version by the English National Opera and Improbable theatre company, in association with the Metropolitan Opera (The Met) in New York.
Howard Brenton’s Drawing The Line, was staged at the Hampstead Theatre in London in 2013. Here, Gandhi’s character, played by Tanveer Ghani, was partly caricatured. In this play, Gandhi’s character is a figure of abdication, possessed of predilections for goat’s milk and consorting with female aides. It had nothing to do with Gandhi’s conflict with Harilal. Nothing, whatsoever, to do with his phenomenal work towards India’s struggle for freedom.
On 13 August 2016, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, opened Danesh Khambata’s Gandhi—The Musical, co-produced with Silly Point Productions. The play featured commonly known milestones from the life of the Mahatma. But the needless glitz and glamour and the romanticising of the production of known milestones from Gandhi’s life were marred by the garish Broadway-style production.
Somewhere in the shadows of the great man lived his son, roaming the streets of India like a beggar. He converted to Islam and became Abdullah Gandhi as a rebellion, then reconverted to Hinduism as a penance, finally drinking himself to death. “Mahatma Gandhi could transform the soul of a nation but could not save the soul of his own son,” said Feroz Abbas Khan who directed a very emotionally moving film on this same story entitled Gandhi, My Father (2008) which also provided source material for Mahatma Bonam Gandhi. The film was produced by Anil Kapoor.
In India, it was only with the dramatisation of Dinkar Joshi’s 1988 novel, Prakash No Padachhayo (In the Shadows of Light) on the life of his son Harilal, that Gandhi was finally seen as much for his flaws as for his greatness. The definitive adaptations included Chandrakant Kulkarni’s 1995 Marathi version, Gandhi Viruddh Gandhi, written by Ajit Dalvi, and Mahatma v/s Gandhi, the 1998 Feroz Abbas Khan production featuring Naseeruddin Shah as Gandhi. The actor lost weight, learnt how to spin the charkha, and delivered a touchstone performance opposite a brilliant Kay Kay Menon as a recalcitrant Harilal, whose foibles served as a contrast to Gandhi’s own intransigence as a father. Khan’s play has been performed extensively in India and abroad, even prompting a cinematic adaptation by Khan himself.
Way back in 1995, this writer happened to be audience to a Marathi language play, Gandhi Virudh Gandhi in a Mumbai theatre directed by Chandrakant Kulkarni based on a dramatisation by Ajit Dalvi, a noted professor of Political Science, from Dinkar Joshi’s 400-page 1988 novel in Gujarati, Prakash No Padachhayo, (In the Shadows of Light) on the life of Gandhi’s eldest son Harilal. The play was presented in five Indian languages— Marathi, Hindi, English, Gujarati, and Kannada. Kulkarni directed three of them.
Atul Kulkarni made his stage debut as Gandhi while Kishore Kadam played Harilal. Chandrakant repeated Atul in the Hindi and Gujarati versions though Atul did not know Gujarati at all. Bhakti Inamdar played Kasturba in the Marathi version. The audience in the full house was stunned into silence, so overpowering was the play enhanced and enriched by the performances of the lead actors. This writer is yet to witness a more finely nuanced production that explores the psychological pinnings that underline Gandhi’s explosive and tragic relationship with his eldest son.
Arun Mukherjee of Chetana, a group he founded fifty summers ago, has recently translated Ajit Dalvi’s English to Bengali and this is the version being performed right now across Kolkata and beyond. It is directed by his son Sujan Mukhopadhyay who plays Harilal and Anirban Chakrborty, a noted theatre actor, plays Gandhi. Mahatma Bonaam Gandhi opens in the dark with the sound of three gunshots piercing the silence followed by the utterance of Hey Ram. Silence. The darkness begins to thin out and the stage gets slowly lit throwing up a huge charkha in the backdrop of the proscenium. Sujan Mukherjee of Chetna who directed the play, drew some of his inspiration and ideas for Mahatma Bonam Gandhi from Feroz Abbas Khan’s film.
The entire play is built around the continuous debates between Mahatma Gandhi and the eldest of his four sons, whose constant argument was based on his understanding that his father, while committed to his Nation was unfair to his personal family, specially to his wife Kasturba Gandhi and the eldest son Harilal. Harilal marries Gulab without informing his parents but Gulab becomes an ideal daughter-in-law though she remains constantly disturbed by the conflict between her husband and his father. Kasturba is trapped between husband and son but as the mother, she is extremely pained and often identifies with Harilal’s troubled mind. She tries to persuade Mahatma to understand Harilal’s desire but Gandhi is as stubborn as his son is. It is there in their genes.
After Gulab Gandhi’s painful death, Harilal loses his mental balance almost and gets sucked into a life filled with women and alcohol. He has returned to India by then and first embraces Islam. Sujan Mukhopadhyay, who also directed the play, performs Harilal, the mentally battered, emotionally disturbed son of Mahatma Gandhi, an embarrassment to the entire Gandhi clan so much so that no one came to his bedside when he lay dying a few months after Gandhi’s assassination on 30 January 1948 in a Bombay hospital.
Sujan has brought across the emotional trauma he goes through as the son who loves his father deeply but cannot understand why he does not care for his own children and his wife. Harilal’s slow but steady metamorphosis from a young man full of dreams of studying law in London to a devoted follower of his father’s movements and belief more to gain his love than to fulfill his dreams, to a slowly emotionally battered person who craves to just lie down on the lap of his mother when his life is almost at an end is brought out beautifully by Sujan Mukhopadhyay. His change comes across through his shift in his dress habits, his body language and his gait – from an erect stature he slowly bends under the pressure of his own doubts and failures. A great performance indeed.
If Harilal is the hero, is Mahatma the villain? Not necessarily. But despite the Mahatma’s dedication to the world and to men and women who have placed their complete faith in him, one begins to question the arguments presented by Harilal, who considers himself completely neglected by his father right through his growth and his life. The entire story of Harilal’s growth into adulthood comes across constantly anchored by the father-son debate with Harilal accusing his father of always placing the nation before his family. Harilal dreamt of going to London to become a barrister but Gandhi gives the vacant position to another young man as he has no faith in Harilal’s abilities to focus on his education. Harilal engages himself in his father’s movement to arouse the nation but though he does gain some popular backing there, he is ultimately forced out of this position too. The closure shows father and son, both long dead, walking towards the river Jamuna to complete their discussion which began soon after the curtains came up.
Shoma A. Chatterji is a freelance journalist, film scholar and author. She has authored 17 published titles and won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema, twice. She won the UNFPA-Laadli Media Award, 2010 for ‘commitment to addressing and analysing gender issues’ among many awards.