Bhand Pather

An interview of M.K. Raina published in the India Foundation for the Arts. [Found this interview thanks to : punarjanman.wordpress.com]

Last year theatre director and actor M K Raina conducted a month-long theatre workshop with IFA support in Akingam village of Kashmir. The workshop participants were children from families that have traditionally performed Bhand Pather. Bhand Pather is a form of farcical theatre that is said to have entered Kashmir from Persia through the Muslim courts in the 14th century and then spread through the rest of north India. Kashmir’s Bhand Pather has been a vibrant tradition but the form has suffered over the last two decades of unrest in the state. Raina’s aim was to restore the self-confidence of the once-active performers of Akingam village as well as start a process of training children in this theatre.

Raina tells us more about Bhand Pather, the experience of the workshop and his future plans.
What does a typical Bhand Pather performance consist of?

M K Raina: It is an open air form performed around Sufi shrines during the annual Urs of Sufi pirs. Thousands of people gather around the shrines during the Urs. They watch the performance and pay the Bhands – sometimes with cash but mostly in kind. The Bhands also perform around Hindu temples. They go into villages during harvest time and they could turn a village courtyard or an orchard into a performance space. They climb trees, they go into houses and peep at their audience from windows, they act entirely according to their whims and fancies.
The performance starts with a wind instrument called swarnai – if you hear the sound of the swarnai, you know the performance is about to begin. The music is dominant and then there are the maskaras or jesters – there could be five or eight or or ten maskaras. They are the spirit of the performance. There is often the figure of a ruler from outside who is exploiting the natives; the jesters fool him and bring him to some kind of an understanding. He will normally speak Persian or gibberish English or Punjabi. They will speak in Kashmiri. He cannot understand them and they cannot understand him. He has a whip which creates a sound of a pistol when he cracks it and that’s a very vivid element. Sometimes the stories are mythological; sometimes you find traces of the Ramayana.
Each performer has a special musical score called mukam. Each mukam has its own name and comes from the classical Sufiana qalaam tradition of Kashmir. The Bhands sometimes sing Sufiana verses too. They mix these with theatre songs and peasant songs; it’s a distinct repertoire of music. They play two percussion instruments – the dhol and the nagara – along with the swarnai and thalej or cymbals.
Bhand Pather has been suppressed by militants over the last two decades. What were the greatest challenges you faced conducting the workshop in Akingam village?

MKR: The performers of Akingam lost their mentor and teacher Guru Mohammed Subhan, a SNA awardee. He became a victim. The militants didn’t want Subhan to perform Bhand Pather, they considered it unIslamic. They put him under house arrest for nine months. Eventually he died from extreme humiliation and shock. His death was a big blow to the performers and they lost their self-confidence. Yet I chose Akingam village because one of the oldest Bhand theatre companies in the Kashmir valley – the Kashmir Bhagat Theatre – is based here. Also Akingam is surrounded by many heritage and sacred sites and there are villages around which also have groups performing Bhand Pather. A village called Muhurpur next to Akingam used to have Kashmiri Pandits Bhand performers but they left the village in 1990. The people of Akingam are deeply Sufi and philosophical in outlook – you start chatting with them and before you know it you are involved in an intellectual discussion on the meaning of existence.
The villagers took us in. The whole village was galvanised into action. The women started cooking for us. The young participants of the workshop staged a performance at the end of the four weeks. A huge crowd turned up from Akingam and from the surrounding villages. I am certain that this was the first time in 19 years that that such a large crowd has gathered together for a cultural event in Kashmir. Some of our friends from Srinagar who had come for the performance could not believe that such a gathering was possible without government support and without any security or police. It is also true that though we met with some resistance along the way it was minor. The militants do not oppose the Bhand Pather today as much as they used to.
You have said: “Kashmiri children have lost their power of imagination and self-expression …perhaps it has to do with the collapse of the education system and two decades of violence.” Can you tell us how children and young people responded to the workshop and what you did to draw them out?
MKR: Because of the threat of violence, children have to be indoors by 3 pm. They suffer from a lack of exposure. Nobody asks them to think for themselves, to imagine. All adults tell them is – shut up, keep quiet, don’t go out because this or that will happen. A people who have traditionally lived their lives in forests and among nature have had to confine themselves to their houses. I went to the houses of Bhand performers in three or four villages and told them – look you have to send your kids for this workshop. They sent them gladly. These elders themselves visited the workshop and performed too – we had a week which was like a little folk festival. We got a flavour of Bhand from other regions of Kashmir.
When working with the boys, my collaborator Rakesh and I woke up to the fact that their bodies were not in the right proportion. There was a stiffness, a distortion, a lack of grace. I started asking myself whether these problems were due to the stresses and tensions that their mothers had gone through before the children were born or if they were a result of the atmosphere they had grown up in.
Initially, it was difficult for the boys to understand that meaningful images and ideas can be communicated just by making an instrument out of the body, like any musical instrument. But eventually they got it. Performance is in their blood after all.
You will soon embark on a two-year IFA-supported project wherein young performers will be trained in different aspects of the form by Ustads. What are the ways in which you see these younger performers making Bhand Pather their own?
MKR: I am hoping to set up a little school in Akingam. My worry has been that the elders will die. Two are very old and they are the best. I’ve told them – I will come to the village when you die and shower rose petals on your grave only if you’ve taught children. Otherwise, I’ll only say you were a good man, but I won’t come with rose petals!
The thing is that these Ustads have a methodology for teaching what they know, but they are very tough and they tend to get impatient. I have to teach them to be patient with young people. But they’ve seen me working so I think they understand the importance of making a child relax. One of my conditions is also that the children will have to continue with their formal schooling.
They will have to understand the basics of the form first. Later they can experiment. I don’t necessarily want them to only perform the traditional repertoire. My dream is to do King Lear with them.
But right now the focus is on setting up this school. Akingam has been designated a heritage tourist village. The government is making a campus where a small building has already come up which has been given to us to use as a rehearsal and teaching space. The idea behind the heritage tourist village is that since Akingam is on the way to Pehelgam and Amarnath, maybe tourists will stop here. And if they do we can perform for them.

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Do read: An article on Bhand Pather by M K. Raina

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Some more on Mohammed Subhan Bhagat

I watched my last paether in 1988. The nineties was the decade of our disappearances, and the bhands and their plays disappeared as well. On January 26, 1990, Subhan Bhagat and his fellow artists were in New Delhi to perform at the Indian Republic Day ceremony. Eight days earlier, CRPF had massacred more than 50 demonstrators in Srinagar. When Bhagat returned home, visitors with Kalashnikovs arrived. Bhagat promised not to perform again in New Delhi. After his death in the mid-nineties, the mantle fell upon his son, Hasan Bhagat.

The intense violence of the nineties left no space for folk theatre and Hasan became a driver. But he had been thinking about contemporary Kashmir. “Maybe it will take some time to stage plays about today, but they are being already written,” Hasan told me a few years ago.

– Basharat Peer, author of recently published first-of-its-kind novel, ‘Curfewed Night, wrote in a Times of India article (4 Jan 2009), titled ‘Living to tell the tale of loss’. Not a fan of  TOI, but this fine article really surprised me.

Kashmir Yesterday, December 1980

Dec 31, 1980
I am awestruck that you’ve hit 160 pages-keeping your price Rs 4. My last copy tipped 300 gram. May you have more pages. It gets me more from the raddiwala.

Ramesh Bhan, Srinagar

India Today mentioned this letter in its 30th Anniversary Special Issue dated OCTOBER 2, 2006.  These classic lines found place in 30 Best Readers’ Letters ever sent to the magazine.

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Related post: Kashmir Yesterday, December 1977

Untitled Post

Gul’e Shah Padshah! 
Gul’e Kerfew!
Dead!

The former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir (July 2, 1984 to March 6, 1986), G.M. Shah (88), died January 6, 2009. Ghulam Mohammad Shah joined his father-in-law Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s party National Confrence in 1944.

Kashmir Election, 2008

This in response to a post about J&K Election by a Kashmiri at the blog named Indian Muslims

High voter turnout does not mean that the common Kashmiri approves of Indian rule or that he does not have a separate set of feelings, it just means that he wants, while India is ruling, let there be a good rule. And then we can proceed to discuss the root meaning of the term “Democratic Governance”.

“Can anyone honestly believe public sentiment has changed so dramatically in a matter of months?”

That sentence could easily have been:
“Can anyone honestly believe public sentiment has changed so dramatically in a matter of months? So what’s the point of elections when we know what they want?”

Maybe that was the reasoning of separatists’ call for boycott. And like everyone else they too do not care about what the UN thinks.

So the question remains: After that public show of anger by Kashmiris, why did India proceed with the election. What was it that the people running and managing these elections knew that the people in media did not know and did not report. What did the people who voted know?

No election. Governors rule. Frustrated with the Kashmiri protests India sends in some more troops. More people die. Terrorist Attacks. More die. More protests. Every one in a loop. Some years later a not so great election, Omar, some years older and not “young” anymore, becomes the CM and we get to read this post(not actually a post about J&K poll but) about “Kashmir polls” with almost its every line unchanged. And you read and write the same comments. What a waste of life and time!

So maybe everyone involved just decided to do something about it and not go through the hoops again. I think common kashmiris, most of whom were not dragged to the polling booth, deserve to be commended even if they voted only for good governance. India did a fine job at holding the election, but the government should not go into too much of a self congratulatory mode. Instead the government and all the parties involved should see this as an opportunity for peace, solution and reconciliation.

In the end, at least, it could well mean the end of “gun culture”.

“Wherever a government has come to power through some form of popular consent, fraudulent or not, and maintain at least an appearance of constitutional legality, it is impossible to produce a guerrilla outbreak because all the possibilities of a civic struggle have not been exhausted.”

– lines of Che Guevara, a figure seen as a hero by almost every armed or unarmed rebel on the planet, even Kashmiris ones love him and quote him – Maqbool Bhat is believed to have been an admirer. These lines help understand the fear of normalcy eating separatist politicians, the simple hopes of common people and the consequences of Indian stupidity of 1987.

Kashmir Yesterday, December 1977

Sheikh Abdullah on cover of India Today

Cover of India Today Magazine Issue December 1-15, year 1977
read
Jammu & Kashmir
The Lion Roars
Story:

Lamb in lion’s guise (Dec 1-15, 1977)

The taxi driver in Srinagar was happy to offer his own assessment of the current political climate.

“Everybody calls Sheikh Abdullah the Lion of Kashmir. But actually he is a lamb at heart,” he said. Pressed a little further, he summed up the situation, “This Ordinance is not a good thing.

It will not solve anybody’s problem.” He was, of course, talking about the recent Ordinance promulgated by Governor L.K. Jha.

Under this law, the Sheikh “in the interest of the security of the state and maintenance of public order”, can arrest or detain anyone for “prejudicial activity” without giving any reason.

For more than four decades now, Kashmiris have depended on a single person to champion their cause— Sheikh Abdullah. If the summer of 1977 in Kashmir was overcome by the sound of thunderous applause at his comeback, the autumn has been considerably subdued.

Via: India Today

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A lot of people believe Kashmir would have been saved lot of troubles if only the Media in India had done its job objectively. Naturally I was surprised to see this cover story and the comment of a common kashmiri published in it.

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A few days ago, father bumped into some kashmiri youngsters from Anantnag at a roadside tea stall in a satellite town of Indian capital. Oldest among them was 23 years old, working in Chennai and was in town to pursue some professional course. They got talking.  
Yes but bad things happened to us. 
Ha! You were too young. What do you know! Do you know this place in Srinagar…those Harsa’gors of Safakadal. It’s winter. They make the best Harsa. You wouldn’t have tasted it. So, what about the elections?
What about it. One of my uncles is running for NC and another is running for PDP. Ha.

The boys paid for the tea. They insisted.


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12/28/08

According to News reports, Omar Abdullah, grand son of Sheikh Abdullah, is going to be the Chief Minister of J&K.

a video presentation on Kheer Bhawani Tula mula, Kashmir

video link

The natural spring of Kheer Bhawani is situated at a distance of 14 miles east of Srinagar Tula Mula in Ganderbal.

Music:
1. A Kashmiri bhajan/aart in praise of resident deity of the spring – Maharagini.
2. Shantakaram Bhujagashayanam, Sanskrit hymns in praise of Vishnu.
Recorded live at the location.
3. Gauri Stutih, Sanskrit hymns in praise of holy Goddess.

Hymns, in praise of resident deity of the spring – Maharagini,quoted at the beginning and at the end are from a Sanskrit scripture called Mahatmya Shri Shri Maharajni Pradurbhava,Shri Maharajni Stutih

All photographs used in the video presentation taken by me in 2008.

Acknowledgment:
A Goddess is Born: The Emergence of Khir Bhavani in Kashmir By Dr. Madhu Bazaz (Google book link)
It’s a diligent work on the origins of Kheer Bhawani and and evolution of her following.

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Photographs to be posted soon.

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