SYMBOLISM IN HINDI DRAMA--I

By Prof. AMAR NATH GUPTA, M.A.

(Government College, Bhopal)

Symbolism is deeply rooted in our emotional and rational life, and lies at the root of all art, literature and philosophy. The mode of expression in which the writer means much more than he literally says, is technically known as symbolism. A thing becomes a symbol when, on account of its association with some thought and feeling, it conveys a significance beyond its logical definition and meaning, What ‘A. E.’ says of his friend W. B. Yeats may be taken, generally speaking, to refer to all symbolists.¹ A symbol may be associative or metaphorical. The first kind of symbol suggests the meaning, not by the connotation of the word, but by the long association of that meaning with the word. In a metaphorical symbol the meaning is suggested, not by association but by an analogy. Fantasy is a half-way house. “We feel,” says Dr. Kishan Chand Bhatnagar, “that English dramatic fantasy is typical of the English sense of compromise, strengthened by the perpetual mists of England, which favours the magical, but, much against the Southern tendency, hates to dabble in the Supernatural.” ² It is an acknowledged fact that symbolic representation is most effective and gripping in the theatre. The more successful the representation of dramatic symbol upon the stage, the more ardent will be the appeal to the human personality through the plastic structure. On the stage the presentation of objective reality through a speaking puppet would be a more successful piece of dramatic representation than if the same is done by direct means. We can, of course, imagine the success the representation of ‘The Treaty of Versailles’ would have in a puppet theatre. The best symbolism is that which gradually unfolds itself along with the reality it means to suggest and interpret; the worst is a burden on human imagination and, on account of its inchaote character, makes reality to suffer.

Allegory is to be distinguished from symbolism. It is a much inferior art. Allegory is more sustained and has very little element of surprise about it. Although allegory obtains effects similar to symbolism, the line of distinction that one can draw between them is that, whereas allegory is more or less an abstract parallel, very thin and superficial sometimes, a symbol is a more concrete and organic structure. Symbolism is also different from ordinary romanticism. Unlike romanticism, it aims to add imaginative or poetic elements to the superficial manifestations of reality. Not satisfied by the mere creation of a glamorous picture, it builds an entire structure of the ethical, intellectual and emotional significance of reality. Symbolism is a means of an escape from the mundane and banal reality of life; it pleases a spectator who visits the theatre, not by way of cheap entertainment but as an explanation of the difficult problems which have been puzzling him for long. To this class of spectators with an aristocratic aloofness, symbolism will have the profoundest appeal. The poetic and the imaginative people find in symbolism an objectification of their own hidden impulses.

Symbols have a very wide range of appeal. There are symbols which are racial and national. Others are strongly invested with great social and personal values. Religions are exuberantly rich in symbols. Sometimes the dramatist in his attempt to break from the old symbols creates his own, which are endowed with a deep personal significance. Dramatic symbolism, broadly speaking, has three forms. Firstly, the dramatist creates beings whose natures, thoughts, actions and passions are of lasting significance to all men, such as are eternal types, though at the same time they are alive and real in any moment of time; secondly, the playwright regards the whole natural world as a symbol of an inner spiritual reality; thirdly, the dramatist may simply use the language of symbolism by the creation of arbitrary forms as bodies for his visions. This is at its best an embroidery, and at its worst a meaningless redundance. A dramatist may be veritably symbolical, or he may tag on a ‘criticism of life’, either specifically or vaguely, and project a comment on the social modes and practices. The value of a symbol does not lie in the enclosing crystal, but in the flame within.’ ³

With all its heritage of symbols of various kinds, Indian Drama peculiarly offers vast possibilities of their use. Every country has its wealth of symbols. On a comparison India will not be found behind other countries in its vast store of symbols, particularly religious and mystical, on account of its being a religious country interested in metaphysical speculations and divine misgivings. Kabir and Tagore, standing at two opposite ends of time, have invested their poetry with the rich exuberance of symbols, which in their origin are deeply rooted in the Indian consciousness. The dramatic output in France, Russia, Germany and Ireland moved slowly towards symbolism. In spite of the fact that, unlike the Indian temperament, the English temperament is opposed to the cult of symbolism as such, English poets reveal a great symbolic heritage. Though a great use of symbols has been made in poetry in Hindi, very few efforts are made to exploit its possibilities in the theatre. This is, in all probability due to the lack of a great genius in Hindi Drama who can exercise his talents on the fast dying puppet and marionette-shows, to use them, as they have been used in Europe, as a means of manifesting the hidden meaning of reality. The earliest symbolic dramas in Hindi were written under the impetus which they received from the literary movement started in Bengali literature earlier by Rabindranath Tagore and later by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, known as the symbolist movement. This movement builds itself upon what is valuable in the metaphysical system of Hindu religion and aesthetics, which have dominated the minds of the Hindus for thousands of years. The symbolic dramas of Tagore at one time were very popular with the Indian public. They captured the imagination of dramatists in Hindi, in the original or translation. The symbolic dramas of Tagore are not dramas of circumstance; it is the permeating idea in them that matters, as in such European dramas of this type as Gerhart Hauptmann’s Hannelas Himmelfahrt, August Strindberg’s Dream Play, Maurice Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird, and Ibsen’s When we Dead Awaken. His plays are conceived aesthetically and he wants us to understand them in the same way. The plays are so delicate and simple, and yet so profound.

The symbolic plays in Hindi are of two kinds; firstly, those ten under the inspiration derived by playwrights in Hindi from the symbolic dramas in Bengali literature; and secondly, those written under the influence exercised by such dramatists as Galsworthy, Ibsen, Barrie and Shelley. Besides, there is another group of plays in which symbolism is used to emphasise a certain moment only. Such plays are not wholly symbolic; symbolism is used in them as an aid. It is here that the influence of English playwrights upon Hindi dramatists is most noticeable. The resemblance may not be in content, but the spirit which has given rise to the use of such a type of symbolism is absolutely foreign.

Kamana (I927) by Jai Shankar Prasad and Chalna by Bhagwati Prasad Bajpai and Nav-ras by Govind Das Seth are plays which may be said to belong to the first class. Kamana is ethical in significance, though in certain respects it is romantic in tone. It is a scathing comment on the meaning of human destiny, and in its deeper significance describes the futility of human civilisation. The playwright has woven an intricate story–which is full of suspense up to the end–round the various stages of development in the advance of civilisation. In a floral island, the inhabitants are living a peaceful life of contentment and simplicity. They consider themselves as having descended from the heavens and the stars. Their life is not torn as yet by the conflicts of life. They live and let others live. The whole island is, as it were, a small family, living close to Nature, which endows it with an unbounded simplicity and honesty. In their small world people happily carry on agriculture to earn their livelihood. Fear, jealousy, conflict, class-consciousness, contention, sin, property, power and marriage, have not so far entered their life. Upon the idyllic island they live, love, sing and play. With the approach of Vilas the whole atmosphere is changed. He has brought with him gold and wine; through them he brings the whole island under his domination. Kamana is attracted towards him and abandons her old friends, Viveka and Santosh. Gold and wine bring with them all their attendant evils. Vilas has a design to civilise them with gold and wine. Their simplicity now is all gone; so too their peace and contentment. Life on the island becomes swinish, grovelling and miserable. There is, disillusionment, discontent and dissipation. The ills of the present civilisation–misery, poverty, class-consciousness, military subjugation–are taking their toll in the island of flowers, rivers, free love, and the artless and poetical conversation of simple girls. Towards the end wisdom has its way with the islanders; they realise the illusive and chimerical nature of this development of civilisation. Vilas is dethroned. Gold ornaments are thrown away and wine tankards are broken. The Queen of the island parts with her golden crown, which has been a symbol of power and of barbarism. Vilas and Lalsa are expelled from the island, and once again Kamana and Santolh are united.

All the characters in the play are symbolic. Vilas stands for an epicure whose desires are never gratified; Santosh is contentment; Viveka is the sage wisdom of ages; Vinod is a symbol of sport, who veers with every change of the wind; Kamana is a symbol of the will to live; Lalsa represents the vaulting ambition of the human heart: life to her is a boundless place for enjoyment; Karuna is a harbinger of suffering; and Lila is a symbol of the playful and sportive spirit in man. The play satirises modern civilisation, and glorifies the ancient civilisation of limited means and greater contentment. The meaning of the dramatist is clear, and is nowhere lost in the vague guessing of a labyrinthine mass. The characters are eternal types; their natures, actions, thoughts and passions are of lasting significance to all men. At the same time, they are alive and real in any moment of life. This significance they have because, in them, all men or many men are comprehended. A race or an age speaks through them. They embody a truth; they are either more terrible or more noble than individuals in emotion or action, hence undying. The same quality characterises the figures of Aeschylian drama; so too of the Antigone of Sophocles, and, moving us with a warmer sense of kinship, the men and women of Euripides. This universality of the play should not, nevertheless, blind us to the individual or local nature of the play, in which case it will be regarded as a very faithful picture of India.

Nav-ras (1941) of Govind Das Seth is another symbolic play of this class. It brings forth the various sentiments of the Indian ‘Rasa’ theory to embody a higher truth, which the playwright intends to convey through their manipulation. The story runs as follows: Vir Singh’s attack against a weak unprotected neighbouring kingdom is foiled by the non-violent, non-resistant help of Vir Singh’s sister to the enemy. Vir Singh’s army refuse to fire on the unarmed followers of Shanta, Vir Singh’s sister. Rudrasen, the minister of Vir Singh, who possessed dictatorial power, is taken captive, and peace is restored. Vir Singh, who had on the battlefield relinquished his throne to Rudrasen, is requested to re-ascend the throne. Vir Singh and Prem Lata are married, and this unites the two contending houses by strengthening their relations. With the downfall of dictatorship, peace is established once again in the realm. All the conflict and strife was so long as dictatorship dominated the council. Discussion is called forth in the context of the play on topics like non-violence and violence, democracy and dictatorship, war or no war, and the play ends with the triumph of non-violence over violence. The best portions of the play can be said to be Lila’s scintillating and sparkling dialogues, where, with the weapon of intellect, she probes reality and gets to the very root of things. The characters, however, are types and symbolise the various sentiments or rasas, which it is the aim of the playwright to represent in the play. Songs are introduced, and some long speeches where there is discussion of a problem, and consequently the action is impeded. Here the dramatic form is used to project a ‘criticism of life’, or a comment on social modes and practices, as is done by Ibsen in some of his problem plays. ⁴

Chalna (1939) of Bhagwati Prasad Bajpai is another symbolic play. The playwright deals with a great problem of our life today. It is the problem of the individual in relation to the inhibitions which society or state or tradition imposes on man or woman for guidance of a safe convoy in life. It is a problem which Ibsen dealt with in some of his plays as The Pillars of Society, An Enemy of the People, A Doll’s House, and Ghosts. But the solution that is suggested by them is different from that of Bajpai. Ibsen is an individualist, and he felt that the individual’s right to the development of his personality is more important than the rights of society or of the state, and especially the state as then organized. On the other hand, Bhagwati Prasad Bajpai does not seem to favour individualism, which is regarded by him as the cause of man’s unhappiness and increasing discontent with the state of things as they are. Kalpana, so long as she is veered by her individual impulses, remains unhappy. She is not only unhappy herself, but the cause of unhappiness in others as well. Balraj, her husband, a poor teacher in an Intermediate College, comes in the way of her individualism, and, till she realises her mistake, is made to retire from the scene of Kalpana’s play of her individualism to a remote place, where he has to suffer so much heart-burning simply to please Kalpana. The meaning of the playwright is simply this: a life destitute of age-old traditions, or personal ideals, is a stranded life without any arm or proper programme to steer the course of life smoothly. A man ungoverned by ideals as such in his self-complacency deceives himself by doing acts, which he thinks are right, but which in reality lead him to the path of his destruction and of the society he lives in. In life is discovered a conflict between this spirit of individualism and a sense of social security of family life. Some cling to the former, others look to the latter for guidance in life. No attempt is made to strike a compromise. Such a complex situation, however, has arisen on account of the influence of the West on our life. On the one hand, in our feverish haste to imitate the western modes of life and thought, we are abandoning our own ways of life, and, on the other, after having gone a little on this path of imitation of the West, we are struck by the futility of it all and turn in desperation to our ancient ideals of life. If consequently we are mentally torn in this conflict and find ourselves in a blind alley. We are not clear in our minds as to what really can extricate us from this impossible morass. We struggle like half-blind men and fail. This is what the playwright pictures in Chalna.

The important characters in the play are Kalpana, Balraj, and Vilfts Chandra. Vilas Chandra represents the epicurean way of life; Kalpana and Balraj are symbols of the educated man and woman of the present day in our country, who are overcome by a sense of frustration and sorrow, for lack of settled principles in their life. Their uncertain attitude is typical of their vague and uncertain life. Kalpana in some sense reminds us of Nora of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Nora’s tragedy was of her own character. What forced Nora out of doors was her own individuality. Kalpana’s unhappiness is also of her own creation. But while Nora, when once a decision was taken, could not think of retracing her steps, Kalpana realises her mistake, not too late, and is united to her husband in the end. Kalpana’s entire trouble is of her own mind; she is a martyr to sentiment. The underplot dealing with Jagesar, Sure, and Champi, progresses with the major plot, though the two stories are not fused with each other. The introduction of the underplot seems to be by way of an ironic contrast. While there is so much of friction, suffering and devastation, in one form or another, in the life of the characters of the higher class; there is complete satisfaction and a spirit of comraderie in the people of beggar class. Champi is a fine foil to Kalpana. Galsworthy excels in the employment of ironic contrast. In the use of the ironic contrast, as also in the selection of these persons of the beggar-class to reveal some of the exalted moments of their life, Bhagwati Prasad seems to be indebted to the dramatists of the school of Galsworthy in English literature. Unlike the ‘Rupaks’ in Sanskrit, where the playwrights attended to the treatment of religion and the differences of the contending sects in them, Bhagwati Prasad, again under the influence of the problem play wrights of the West, like Ibsen, Galsworthy, and Bernard Shaw, has struck a new note by dealing with social problems in a symbolic way. The playwright has not resisted the temptation of introducing songs. There are four songs here. They, however, harmonise with the sentiments of the characters. Such a play is symbolic only in the loose sense, since it does not contain acts or objects or images which convey in concentrated form the values the playwright is engaged in communicating. Like the two other plays discussed above, Chalna, however, is a projection of the playwright’s comment on social modes and practices.

Vikas (1941) by Govind Das Seth is an excellent symbolic play of its class. It is the only play of its type in Hindi literature. On account of its peculiar technique and multiplicity of scenes of various kinds, it will be difficult to stage it. The playwright calls it a dramatic conversation, for the interest of the play centres round a discussion between a young man and his wife about the progress of the Universe, which, when they are asleep, is seen by the youth in his dream. ‘Akas’ (sky) and ‘Prithvi’ (Earth) are introduced discussing whether or not the Universe has progressed. ‘Akas’ is of the opinion that undoubtedly progress has been made by the Universe, when we reckon progress in a collective way; ‘Earth’, as is her nature, holds that the Universe has moved in a circle; periods of advancement have followed ages of decay, and vice versa, and this goes on forever. At present the Universe is on the way to a decline on account of the predominance of man’s physical propensities over his spiritual ones. The playwright does not state his point of view, which suggests that in their own way both the opinions may be taken as correct; they are but two different ways of expressing the same thing. Both cite instances to prove their own point of view. They vie with one another in their enthusiastic references to the life of Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ to elucidate and amplify the truth of their saying. These ‘ghosts’ of the past occupy a greater space than the actual conversation of the two characters. For this resuscitation of the scenes of the past, the photo-technique of the cinema has been employed. On the kaleidoscopic screen, scenes follow with the quick rapidity of lightning, which can be possible only in a cinema and not a theatre. Besides the influence of the cinema, the playwright seems to have been influenced by the dream-technique employed by Barrie in Dear Brutus. On the opening of the windows of the country-house Lok, the scene is changed into a wood, where all the characters, who had been gathered, are forced to betake themselves to life a second time. On their return from the wood a change has been brought about in the characters. The second Act of the play is devoted to imaginary life which each of the persons dreams as leading. The same technique is employed here. Towards the horizons scenes change, and with them also change the times. The audience would see the past through them and would also hear the comments of ‘Akas’ and ‘Prithvi’. This interplay of light and shade, darkness and sunshine, past and present, is a fine attempt at dramatic craftsmanship, and is the outcome of the playwright’s study of the dramatic technique of the dream-plays of the West. Kissing and embracing and representation of death are also modern notes. There is no scenic division. Change of scene is either indicated by stage-directions or by mentioning change of time and place in so many words.

¹ “..….the glimmering waters and winds are no longer beautiful natural presences, but have become symbolic voices and preach obscurely some doctrine of their power to quench the light of the soul or fan it to a brighter flame.” Imagination and Reveries.

² Vide ‘The Symbolic Tendency in Modern Drama,’ The Calcutta Review Feb. 1942, page 146.

³ Storm Jameson’s ‘Modern Drama in Europe.’ Page 201.

⁴ Cf, “When we Dead Awaken.” In this play Ibsen gives his judgment on two of the greatest problems of life, and deals imaginatively with them. Firstly, he affirms that art is not an end in itself, but that it must be subordinated to life; secondly that sex-passion must in the course of experience be sublimated, not by celibacy, but by a finer passion, which would follow on a union of wisdom and love.

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