In 2023, just before its scheduled staging, the theatrical adaptation of Bhisham Sahni’s celebrated novel Tamas was stopped from being performed at the National School of Drama (NSD). This transformed the usual production into something exceptional and contentious in the Indian theatrical landscape. That is, bringing this play to the stage in its original adapted form now required considerable effort and insistence. Consequently, NSD director Chittaranjan Tripathi took upon himself the responsibility of launching it this year. In the process, the only precaution exercised was to render the staging so diluted that if Sahni himself (a vocal vāmpanthi) had witnessed it, he would have either died a hundred deaths, or erased the existence of this artistic expression. The poster of the play. Photo: By arrangement.Following our professor’s instructions, we went to watch this play at NSD. The tampering with the title itself – from Tamas to Vibhajan Vibhishika Tamas – indicated that some tinkering, if not outright distortion, must have been done with the content and narrative structure. Also, the term Vibhajan Vibhishika had been popularised by the prime minister the previous year in reference to the remembrance day on August 14. Being unfamiliar with the intellectual-academic manoeuvrings of the current state-centric politics, since their appointees had not yet entered our school of arts and aesthetics at JNU, we permitted ourselves the leniency of imagining that Sahni’s political stance might have been softened and the narrative reshaped into something less provocative. With this thought in mind, we entered NSD’s Abhimanch auditorium.The playThe opening scene, teeming with performers, began with a pre-recorded, booming chorus: “Asato mā sad gamaya…”. This was followed by another song: ‘Purab Mein Ishwar, Pashchim Me Allah’. It is worth noting that the responsibility of composing this background score too was assumed by Tripathi himself. Judging by the stage décor, lighting, and colour design, the scene stood out as a painstaking attempt at grandeur, an imitation of something divine, majestic and sublime. A similar assessment could, in fact, be made about the last scene too, combining stagecraft with performers’ specific body language. Yet, after the first few sequences, it became clear that the presentation of a certain recognisable character-group was being undertaken with deliberate and disproportionate distortion from the original.To begin with, a new sub-scene had been inserted that hijacked the entire narrative. One could not directly enter into Sahni’s Tamas anymore. An additional, extraneous character now ushered the audience into the play. This inserted character (spawned from who-knows-whose pen) entered speaking funky English on a phone call: “Hi-Hello bro… yakkity-yak…” urging a friend to walk the path his father had shown to him. This “path” amounted to a lament: How we have drifted from “Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan,” how we are forgetting our culture.The irony was that by way of this contrived political narrative, the character proceeds to leaf through Tamas itself, triggering the stage’s shift in the first scene. Yet, perhaps it wasn’t ironic at all, for what they actually engineered was less Sahni’s Tamas than an invention. Something that neither Sahni, nor Nihalani, Bajaj, nor Tanvir could have conjured. But here lies the rub: if one wished to ride on such a political narrative, then why not select an overtly nationalist text instead? But then no hyper-nationalist writer seems to have produced anything of substance. On Partition and its aftermath, not even a Hindi heartland writer of stature dared to write with such honesty. It was sheer luck that this Punjabi-born writer, Sahni, provided them with a ready-made platform for their state-centric commentary. Still, if it was not possible back then, could it not be possible now, in this proclaimed “Amrit Kaal”, to craft something original, where artistic delight and subtle ideological messaging could coexist? But no, what we witnessed was not creation but distortion. And, tellingly, this distortion was both inaugurated and concluded through the same inserted character. The most controversial final scenes end with him reappearing, explaining how first the British and then the Congress toyed with people’s sentiments, and introducing us to New India, the Har Ghar Tiranga campaign, Operation Sindoor, and the glory of today’s ‘Yashasvi’ and his ‘Yashasvis’. The finale then segued into Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s poem “Maut Se Than Gayi”, performed by all actors directly addressing the audience, ending the play.Ideological insertions in Sahni’s narrativeThe ideological insertions stuffed into Sahni’s narrative turned this staging into something painful and unjust for his admirers. The little glimmers of the original novel’s soul survived in those characters who, amid communal carnage, held fast to human goodness and integrity, embodying Gandhian values with poise and equanimity. If we canonise them, they were the sobering, anti-extremist figures. But in this staging, they seemed devoured, distorted, or erased. Almost every character was now recast according to a template of hyper-heightened emotions, turning the humane and modest episodes into hollow, meaningless gestures.A scene from the play. Photo: By arrangement.A kind of deceit had been sewn into the fabric of these simple characters. A deceit explicitly announced in the final interpolated commentary. In his novel, Sahni had critically reflected on, and challenged, the two-nation theory of the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha. He also probed, through certain characters (both Gandhian and their rational, constructive critics), the values that might guide nation-building. In this staging, however, nobody seemed to walk that narrow path of goodness. The Muslim radical characters were blown up into archetypal villains, while the Hindu radicals were softened, their scenes minimised and their presence diluted. Characters like Master Devvrat (training Hindu boys with lathis), the Minister (hosting Hindu Org. meetings in temples), Bodhraj (adept at shabdabhedi baan), Ranvir, Dharmadev, Nayak, Shambhu, Indra, Manohar – young bloods intoxicated with martial zeal – were pushed aside or made shadowy. In contrast, the Islamic extremist figure Murad Ali was amplified with such largeness, theatricality and sinister colouring that he alone emerged as the sole social enemy. Clad in Islamic attire, wielding a cane, Murad Ali stood as the living embodiment of cruelty. In the final tableau, as Vajpayee’s poem was sung by the collective, Murad Ali was positioned between the audience and the performers, projecting upon us the image of our only ‘enemy’ – the Muslim. A scene from the play. Photo: By arrangement.Another scene had been added before the finale. Gandhi, spinning the charkha, sat at the front of the stage. In the background, stood a British woman (appearing as some officer’s wife) and a man resembling Nehru . Memory may fail me, but the woman’s line to him contained the word “Jawahar,” and it went somewhat like: “Hey…do you have a lighter?” In response, the man knelt, like a lover offering a rose, and lit her cigarette. Immediately after, the anti-Congress speech was delivered, juxtaposed against paeans to the utility of this “New India.” All of Sahni’s intentions, his personal anguish and consciousness arising from Partition, displacement, and its wounds, were obliterated. The character of Natthu, who in the novel embodies a crucial, alternative discourse, was here muted, sidelined, and never allowed to fully unfold. By the end, even Natthu’s fate was missing—signalling how ruthlessly this one-dimensional directorial narrative had consumed him.The shift in spectatorshipThe entire staging was orchestrated in such a manner that one felt film’s aesthetics – through songs, background score and special effects – forcibly imposed upon the medium of theatre. Yet, surprisingly, Delhi’s theatre-going audience did not complain. Instead, these cinematic inflections enhanced their consumption. Once they heard that English-speaking, Hindi-yearning gentleman’s narration, they promptly forgot what Tamas was, or who Bhisham Sahni had been. In this new form, the production carried such novelty that it left behind an unprecedented after-effect, one entirely opposed to the established legacy of Tamas. In this audience, arriving at NSD, one could clearly see a political-ideological shift from the older NSD spectatorship.And this shift must also be read as marking the decline of NSD and its long-standing legacy. The administration too appeared unusually vigilant this time, conducting multiple security checks. During the play, the attendants were so alert that even a momentary phone light was grounds for expulsion. Many were stopped from clicking even a single photograph. Not even NSD’s own archival recording was on. Before the show began, messages akin to film disclaimers were displayed: “No offence intended; if offence caused, apologies.” Several times it felt as if, in asking for extra forgiveness and time, Tripathi was not addressing the audience but someone else. The proof lies in this single line, uttered after securing the spotlight and a mic: “We request you, please allow us to perform this play.” The audience, meanwhile, was clapping thunderously, and exclaiming “Waah” through its arc from anticipation to fulfilment. For whom, then, was this address truly intended? That remains the eighth wonder or no wonder at all!Prem Vatsa is a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.