Habib Tanvir, considered one of the great dramatists not only in India, but in many countries, passed away in Bhopal at the age of 85 on 8th June, 2009. His passing away is really the end of an era. He brought drama so close to life that you felt there is an actor hidden inside every individual whenever you watched his plays. He transformed the labourers living in working class colonies in Okhla in Delhi, students of Jamia and folk artists of Chhatishgarh into brilliant performers. As performers in his plays he relied on common people from the general populace rather than artists trained in big and famous institutes. His intense association with the Indian Left, progressive movements and IPTA since 1945 had taught him that people’s art will emerge from within them and not from intellectuals engrossed in their own world or in elite institutions. Habib saab could turn any place into a stage, whether it was a market place, or street-bylanes, or the villages.
He was the Bertolt Brecht of South Asia. Through the staging of “Agra Bazaar” in 1954 itself he gave shape to his persistent-vision of a rare and extraordinary theatre activism. Through his plays he reinvented Nazir Akbarabadi, the extraordinary people’s poet of 19th century, in similar style as Kumar Gandharva did Kabir through his music. Habib saab was a poet and an actor too. He acted in 9 films including Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, and wherever he appeared on screen he left others far behind in performance. He had been staging the play “Ponga Pandit” since 1960’s, but since the 1990’s the Sangh Parivar attacked the play repeatedly.
But what could they do to this bold and courageous artist. Governments and Academies heaped Habib saab with a lot of awards- Sangit Natak Academy Award, Fellowship, Padmshri, Padmbhushan, membership of the Rajya Sabha, etc., but these awards are dwarfs in front of the artist he had within. It was he who brought international recognition and fame to the folk cultures like Pandwani and Naach. World knows of Chaatisgarhi language due to him as it’s the language of his great play “Charandas Chor”.
How many cultural personalities are there today who earned so much recognition in foreign countries, have been/are associated with the top European institutions, but who had no beginning nor end except his own soil as Habib saab. His play “Jahrili Hawa” (poisonous air) on the Bhopal Gas tragedy was staged in 2002, and a film on this tragedy by the same name as the play is about to be released, and he has himself acted in the film. Meanwhile, he has taken leave from us and it has made us all sad.
Its our fondest hope that the “New Theatre” continues to thrive even without him.