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Journalism of Courage
When Virasat, a folk festival, returned to Dehra Dun after a gap of over four years, it brought home not only national arts and traditions but also home-grown ones.
Organised by the Rural Entrepreneurship for Art and Cultural Heritage REACH and supported by the Uttaranchal Tourism Department, it8217;s probably the biggest cultural extravaganza since the creation of the state. 8216;8216;The government and people have showed more interest in it now that there is Uttaranchal,8217;8217; says R K Singh, general secretary, REACH.
The enthusiasm of the townspeople was matched by the big names who attended the festival. George Fernandes graced the occasion, directors Prakash Jha and Govind Nihalani showed their films Gangaajal and Deham and Naseeruddin Shah staged Ismat Apa Ke Naam. Folk culture was represented by the Rajasthani crowd-pullers: the Langas and Manganiars and the Kalbeliyas.
But the scene-stealers, appropriately enough, were the folk traditions of Uttaranchal. The highlight of the repertoire: An attempt to showcase the Chakravyuh episode from the Mahabharta as it was originally performed in the hills before the influences of the plains and Bollywood crept in.
Originally the Chakravyuh was performed only in Garhwali. Over the years, as the language gave way to Hindi and Urdu, traditional costumes started being replaced by jeans and sneakers. In a rush to marry antiquity with modernity, some characters took to sporting sunglasses and the Pandavs and the Kauravs wore flashy watches and regularly referred to them.
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The scene-stealers, appropriately enough, were the folk traditions of Uttaranchal. The highlight: an attempt to showcase the Chakravyuh episode from the Mahabharata
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8216;8216;The characters would mouth sher-shairi and copy Pasri theatre,8217;8217; says Suresh Kala, director of the Chakravyuh presented in Dehra Dun. Together with D R Purohit, a reader in English at Srinagar8217;s Garhwal University who has researched folk forms of Garhwal for decades, they found a sponsor for the purist revival in REACH a couple of years ago. 8216;8216;We compiled a standarised script in Garhwali and reorganised the music,8217;8217; says Purohit.
The first performance, with a cast of rural actors, was held appropriately in a village called Gandhari. Nearly 30,000 people descended from neighbouring villages to see the play. 8216;8216;When Abhimanyu was killed the women in the audience were weeping. Some 40 people in the crowd went into a trance,8217;8217; says Lokesh Ohri, joint secretary, REACH. And in the hills, the success of a show lies in the number of people it can send into a trance.
After the success of the play in Gandhari and now in Dehra Dun, REACH aims to make this new standardised script available to other villages of Garhwal.
While Chakravyuh may be the most popular episode, Pandav Leela is an established folk form in this region. William S Sax, a professor at Heidelberg University, Germany, who8217;s been researching the subject for years now, says, 8216;8216;It8217;s only in Garhwal that the Pandav Leela is conceptualised as a shradh for the Pandus. The Mahabharata is preserved here as a oral tradition and differs slightly from the Sanskrit version.8217;8217;
As an example Sax refers to the Gainda or rhinoceros episode where Arjuna is killed by his and Chitrangada8217;s son for hunting down his pet rhinoceros. This episode in the alternative folk Mahabharata as Sax calls it, is absent in the Sanskrit Mahabharata but finds a parallel among the Bhils of Rajasthan.
But why does the tale of the Mahabharata take precedence over all others in the region? Sax has an answer. 8216;8216;Historical research is gradually locating the Mahabharata in this region.8217;8217; The Pandavas are said to have ascended to heaven from Uttaranchal Himalayas. There are villages where Karna is worshipped as daani raja. And there8217;s a temple dedicated to Someshwar: some say it is Duryodhana while others say it8217;s Someshwar devta. In the hills, the Mahabharata is not yet quite over.
