100 years of Subhadra, IC Nanda’s play on widow remarriage

Sarika Sharma

A hundred years ago, Ireland was seeking freedom from British rule and its artistes were using freedom of women as a metaphor to seek freedom for their nation. Perhaps under the influence of his Irish teachers, a young man in India had felt swayed enough to sit up and write about the women in his own country, their rights, their lives, their choices — all denied to them by the feudal society they lived in. Known as the father of Punjabi drama, Ishwar Chander Nanda’s 1920 play on widow remarriage, Subhadra, was a revolutionary piece of writing for the times, a major departure from the tradition of religious and folk theatre of Punjab. The play turns 100 this year.

The three-act play tells the story of a young widow suffering under the rigid laws of society. Aware of her sufferings, her parents feel helpless under the social mores, but her brother wants to get her remarried to his friend. The whole world turns against him for defying the social mores, but he persists. Nanda borrowed the plot from his friend who had attempted a similar step vis-à-vis his sister.

Playwright Atamjit points out that the Punjab of that time was undergoing a tragic social change. In the preceding few years, several men had left Punjab villages to fight in World War I. “So many lives were lost there, leaving as many women widowed. It is amid this background that Nanda talks of second marriage.”

He says Nanda was the pioneer when it came to writing on women and women rights. “His very first play, Dulhan (which kicked off modern Punjabi drama) had the same theme — liberty of women. The society around was feudal and the drama committed itself to the cause,” he says, pointing out that Nanda was under the influence of Norah Richards, the Irish actress and theatre director who introduced Punjab to progressive theatre in Punjabi language. She was fondly known as Lady Gregory of Punjab, after the legendary Irish dramatist.

Dulhan (also known as Suhaag) is the story of a young girl whose father wants to get her married to an elderly man, but the girl refuses. “It is a very peculiar situation for the girl’s mother. She understands her daughter but is bound by economic compulsions. When the baraat is at the gate, the girl runs away and the parents marry her younger sister, almost an infant, to the man. While one realises that marriage of an even younger girl is a bigger problem, the elder one’s decision to run away is a revolutionary step. Nanda’s play celebrating her guts won the first prize in the competition organised by Norah Richards,” says Atamjit. The award encouraged him to write more such plays. For instance, Lily Da Viah, which was about a rich woman marrying her poor tutor.

Nanda toured villages staging Subhadra, starting conversations, inviting criticisms... Theatre director Sahib Singh says Norah wrote that Nanda’s plays, including Subhadra, often met with criticism. “They would often create a stir and Norah would tell her students that only amid such opposition can the rigid norms of society be broken,” he says.

In recent times, however, Subhadra stands forgotten. It was last staged in 1992 by Gursharan Singh. Sahib Singh played the progressive brother and local actor Sonia played Subhadra. While Atamjit feels lost interest in the play hints at its irrelevance in today’s times, Sahib Singh says that as long as women are denied their due, the play will serve as a metaphor for women’s rights.

'Reformers’ understanding of a widow’s sexuality was complex'

Anshu Malhotra, Professor and Kapany Chair for Sikh and Punjab Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, has written extensively on gender issues and discusses the play in her 2002 book Gender, Caste and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab. She says the reformers’ understanding of a widow’s sexuality was complex, but they normally used the fear of her sexuality (outside of marriage) to advocate widow remarriage. “IC Nanda does that in the play too. Also, in reality, not much changed for widows, with very few remarriages actually taking place,” she says. Atamjit agrees, but points out that in Subhadra, the second marriage is not an act of emotion, but a rational solution. The situation was grim, but there was no solution. “He offered one,” he says.