After 20 years of 'silence', Kashmir's top theatre artistes meet to discuss a rich past & fragile future

SRINAGAR: On a freezing winter morning in Srinagar early this week, a large group of senior Kashmiri theatre artists, writers and directors, gathered at Tagore Hall to talk about something that once animated the Valley's evenings: theatre.

It was the first such assembly in nearly two decades, organized by the Sahitya Akademi in collaboration with the Srinagar-based Young Dramatists Society. The two-day seminar navigated nostalgia and moved through memory lanes even as anxiety about the future of Kashmiri drama hung heavily in the air.

The gathering itself resembled a performance, a rare moment when Kashmir’s theatre community was on the same stage. The artistes passionately debated the relevance of theatre, original Kashmiri contributions and why youngsters were not drawn to it today.

“Over the decades, theatre has remained one of Kashmir’s strongest performing arts,” Prof Shaad Ramzan, a scholar of the Kashmiri language said, arguing that it has long enriched the region’s literary life.

Playwright M Amin Bhat described Kashmiri theatre as a form still searching for its own idiom. "It has survived," he said, "even through the past 35 years of political upheaval. What it lacks now is renewed purpose. It is necessary that it attracts the younger generation. But they are choosing social media reels instead."

In Srinagar’s old city, theatre once had a natural home. Javeed Gilani, a writer, said that Habba Kadal, a historic bridge area, functioned as a cultural hub, first between the 1930s and 1950s, and then again from 1970s to the 1980s. With no formal auditoriums, companies like the National Theatre Company, Maharaja Theatre Company and scores of others performed in open fields and makeshift spaces.

“Theatre boards were everywhere,” Gilani said. “Habba Kadal was the epicentre of Kashmiri theatre.” However, that world, he said, began to unravel in the early 1990s, as insurgency disrupted Kashmir’s cultural life. Drama companies quietly removed their signboards, and artists shifted to what felt safer -- television and radio.

Ironically, before the onset of those troubled times, the absence of a drama group in Kashmir's villages was considered a "cultural deprivation and departure". Dildar Ashraf Shah and Sheikh Fatima, theatre activists said in both north and south Kashmir, troupes traveled from village to village, staging socially relevant plays.

The 1950s and 1960s marked the rise of the progressive movement, which reshaped Kashmiri theatre’s ideological and aesthetic contours and aligned it with socialistic mores. Writers and poets like Ghulam Ahmad Mehjoor, Abdul Ahad Azad and Dina Nath Nadim brought modern craft into it while others like Pushkar Bhan, Som Nath Sadu and Ali Mohammad Lone expanded narrative depth and form.

Folk theatre flourished alongside literary drama. In south Kashmir, Kashmiri folk theatre called Band Pather was at its pinnacle, particularly in Akingam, where Mohammad Subhaan Bhagat founded the Kashmir Bhagat Theatre in 1962 and trained generations of performers, some of whom are still performing.

Opera, too, found a place. Gulshan Badrani, theatre writer, traced its beginnings to Dina Nath Nadim, who introduced the form in 1953. Nadim’s operas, including 'Himal and Nagrai', based on a legendary love story, and 'Vitasta', centered on the river Jhelum, were staged across the country. They were also performed in China and Russia. Badrani said its genesis went back to 'Agar Nama', written by Ghulam Ahmad Lone in 1832 (it talks about the seven rivers of Kashmir and its seven tributaries).

Actor and director Mushtaaque Ali Khan reminisced about Tagore Hall itself, which for decades served as the nerve center of Kashmiri theatre. Opened in 1961 by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, the then prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir, the hall has hosted national icons from Mohammad Rafi to Talat Mahmood. "Begum Akhtar and Runa Laila have performed here. Habib Tanvir has staged plays," he said.

The mood changed when playwright and theatre designer Bhawani Bashir Yasir challenged the legacy of the progressive movement, calling it “imported propaganda which Kashmir absorbed too uncritically". He argued that Kashmiri theatre has lost its voice. But rejected despair. “When voices are suppressed and books are banned, theatre must go on,” he said.

Nisar Naseen, a theatre activist, interjected and said that though revival efforts began in the mid-1990s, contemporary productions often ignored strong writing.

Two days after the seminar, Tagore Hall hosted an English-language play, 'The travellers of Barzakh', directed by theatre-director Arshid Mushtaq. Originally written in Urdu and performed by college boys and girls aged 18 to 23, the play touched Kashmiri philosophical sensibilities and the tension between silence and speech.

Mushtaq described it as a "neo-absurd play". By casting young performers, he made a statement -- that the Valley’s youngsters still care for theatre, if given a script strong enough to hold their attention.

For many in attendance, it was a reminder that even in Kashmir’s long winters, the stage can still offer much needed warmth.

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