Corruption, sexual abuse: playwright takes script from front pages

Exploding with an in-your-face style which hammers home the political message, Gursharan Bha ji, as he is known to the theatre world, has woven into his play the raging debate over tainted PPSC chairman Ravi Sidhu and the row over charges of sexual harassment of girl students against the then Punjabi University vice-chancellor Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia.

In a scathing treatment, Gursharan has orchestrated the ploy of a public trial — Lok Kachehri — into the play where the characters playing Ravi Sidhu and Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia sit face-to-face telling their own stories in gory details as ‘Saru Rana’ wants saza-e-maut for them, backed by the crowd shouting ‘‘Death sentence’’.

‘‘I have strongly drawn on the two media stories. In one scene, I have depicted how the vice-chancellor wants to see no other painting by Saru Rana but only that of a woman bathing, insists that he wants to see it in her presence and then makes lurid comments. If anyone thinks I have defamed somebody, he or she can happily go and get me arrested. I don’t care,’’ says Gursharan, known for his activist style of theatre.

Both Gursharan and Rohit Batra, who described himself as the guest director, said he was fully aware of the consequences, and were prepared to face them head-on. ‘‘I expect quite a reaction when the play opens at Tagore Theatre on June 3 evening. That’s why we are doing only one show initially,’’ said Batra, but Gursharan told The Indian Express he was looking forward to soon stage the play at Sector 17 plaza here ‘‘if a forum like the Bar Association helps.’’

Most of the cast comprises either students from Panjab University or government employees. In fact, Sandeep (name changed), who plays Ravi Sidhu in the play is a Punjab government employee. ‘‘Bha ji insisted that I do it, and now I don’t care what happens,’’ Sandeep said.

Gursharan said he has also invited the real Saru Rana herself to watch the play apart from retired Supreme Court judge Kuldip Singh, Justice (retd) Ajit Singh Bains and human rights activist Inderjit Singh Jaijee. Saru’s mother, when contacted by The Indian Express, said she knows Gursharan very well, and would be happily there for the show.

Asked whether she believes Saru Rana was really very brave, Pallavi, who plays Saru, said, ‘‘I believe in Gursharan and his script.’’ And, in fact, it is such respect that the playwright commands which makes his plays possible in some times extremely trying circumstances too, like when he staged a play against killings of innocents by terrorists right at Darbar Sahib chowk in Amritsar in April 1984.

‘‘Men like Ravi Sidhu and Ahluwalia deserve the sentence that my characters pronounce on them because they have murdered many a career, many a future,’’ says Gursharan, who has also introduced in the play a woman character who recalls how she had to quit Guru Nanak Dev University twenty years ago because of harassment by male teachers and could not complete her studies. ‘‘They murdered my future. They deserve death sentence,’’ she shouts.

Defending his near-journalistic theatre, Gursharan said he was aware that some people criticise his plays saying that drama is a language of symbols, not journalism. Gursharan, a dyed-in-the-wool leftist, has kept his torch of a rebel’s voice aflame in the face of Emergency, when he staged a play Takht Lahore and was arrested. Admant on continuing with his play, he was thrown in jail under MISA.

‘‘My voice is against the conspiracy of silence. I am outraged by the lack of a feeling of outrage among the student community today,’’ says Gursharan, as he loudly rehearses opening lines of the play once more:

Pesh kar rahe han natak Benaqab, Asi hun hor chup nahi reh sakde. (We are presenting the play Benaqab because we can’t keep our silence anymore).