Unsung Heroes: Simplicity espoused by Mahatma Gandhi is everything for Karnataka theatre activist Prasanna

“Theatre was something that I had always wanted to pursue. I had joined the National School of Drama (NSD) on the persuasion of BV Karanth (film director and playwright known for his works in Kannada theatre). Money was never my concern. My requirements have always been minimal,” he says.

In 1975, Prasanna graduated from the NSD and returned to Bengaluru to found Samudaya, one of the largest theatre movements for workers in south India. Prasanna says the movement can be compared with the Jana Natya Manch started in 1972 by slain theatre artist Safdar Hashmi.

“The difference lies in the fact that the radical theatre movement started by Hashmi in Delhi worked like a cultural group of Left parties, while Samudaya had its branches in the backward regions of Karnataka and Hyderabad,” he says.

Prasanna recalls that during the Emergency, he used theatre to protest against the government.

While Prasanna is often referred to as a Gandhian, he says he would not want himself to be called that.

“Unfortunately, the period is best known for the imposition of the Emergency by the former Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi. People were disgruntled at the functioning of Mrs Gandhi and a large group of intellectuals were frustrated with the government. Here I used theatre to register my protest. Samudaya invigorated inspiration in the youngsters. The use of theatre to bring out the fallacies of the government was never planned, but the atmosphere of the NSD nurtured political thoughts in me,” he says.

While veteran actors like Om Puri and Raj Babbar were his classmates, the late actor Irrfan was his student.
Prasanna has also been fighting for the rights of weavers and thinks the government is just pretending to promote khadi. He opposed the Union government’s recent decision to amend the flag code to allow the use of polyester for making national flags.

“We have lost faith in handmade products. They are eco-friendly and sustainable. Flag represents the entire people of the country. Women in rural India are dependent on spinning and they earn something. The traditional practices and values are now being crushed. We have to preserve them,” he says.

In the early 1990s he founded Charaka, a multipurpose women’s cooperative in Heggodu, a village in Karnataka. Charaka markets its handloom products through Desi, which was saddled with a whopping 87,000m of unsold fabric. Desi has 15 stores in the state and is left with a stock of garments worth around Rs 1 crore. “It was a difficult time. We saved Charaka. We also made it a little stronger structurally and I shifted to Mysuru to concentrate on theatre,” he recalls.

Prasanna recalls that during the Emergency, he used theatre to protest against the government.

“Theatre is my major profession. I had neglected theatre for almost three decades. Actors from across the country want to get trained by me. I wrote a book called Indian Method in Acting eight years ago. It became a bestseller. The book was published by the NSD. Theatre is a sense-based medium as opposed to everything which is logic-based. The actor has to bring sense into the words that are given to him and the sense has to come from his body and emotion like a mother gives birth to a child. I still have faith in the theatre,” says Prasanna, who now lives in Mysuru.

While Prasanna is often referred to as a Gandhian, he says he would not want himself to be called that. “It leads to a confusion where questions are asked whether I am not a Marxist anymore. I want to be a simpler person because theatre has to be done in a simpler way. Let’s not forget that it was a writer of the calibre of Leo Tolstoy who, through his own notions of simplicity and simple living, inspired Gandhiji. I believe in a simpler way of performing, both in theatre and in a society which Gandhiji was a great part of, because he was ruthlessly pursuing it at the cost of himself,” Prasanna sums up.