Why This Play?

“Since a writer can never truly detach himself from reality, we would want him to engage with his era with enthusiasm—this is his only opportunity. His era is made for him, just as he is made for his era. We will lose nothing of our time; it may not be the best of all, but it is ours. We only have this one life to save, amidst this war, perhaps amidst this revolution.”

Sartre wrote these words while engulfed in the flames of World War II. His play, “The Respectful Prostitute”, written in 1946 against the backdrop of an incident in an American town, was what he called a “theatre of circumstances.” It was about making choices, about how an individual must find ways to liberate themselves in response to their given reality.

The history of Black people fighting against white supremacist racial oppression in Europe and America is well known. In contemporary India, aggressive Hindutva has once again fueled an atmosphere of hatred and division across the country, reminiscent of that history. Just as white terror and anti-Semitism were rooted in racist ideologies of supremacy, the RSS—propagating Hindu caste supremacy based on Manusamhita—has found its political weapon in the BJP, which has raised the flag of triumphant Hindutva in Varanasi under the leadership of Narendra Damodardas Modi. This new wave of communal discord threatens the centuries-old pluralistic heritage of the Indian subcontinent.

At a time when independent India should be moving past the wounds of Partition to focus on the struggles for livelihood, economic inequality, and democratic rights, Hindu fundamentalists are pushing the country towards religious extremism—just as Muslim fundamentalism has led neighboring states into theocratic regression, pulling them back into medieval darkness instead of social and economic progress.

In such times, what should a theatre practitioner do? Should they retreat into the comfortable belief in “art for art’s sake”? Or should they transform the stage into a weapon against this “circumstance”?

This play is, in essence, a humanistic statement against the fascist dominance of the majority.