Decolonising Bengali Theatre: A Study of Selim Al Deen’s Kittonkhola and Chaka as Postcolonial Resistance Drama

Abstract

Selim Al Deen, a prominent figure in Bengali theatre, questions the hegemony of Western forms in literature through his dvaitadvaita (dualistic dualism) theory and fusion theory of art and literature. Modern art and literature in Bengal, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, was shaped by European art and literature in its form, structure, and content. Modernity imposed literary styles that undermined the potential of Bengal’s own ancient literary traditions, which include the rich rural forms of literature, such as jatragan, palagan, puthi, pachali, geetnatyo, natyogeet, kothokota, etc. The well-defined and static genres of European tradition pushed these literary traditions to the margins of Bengali literature, where these were regarded as forms of low culture or low literature, in contrast to the literary “highs” created through the modern traditions. Selim Al Deen in Bengali theatre and drama counters this modernity by resisting its genre style, structure, form, and content. The subaltern literary forms rooted in rural Bengali tradition and in the lives of marginal people come to the centre in Deen’s literary experimentations since 1980s. Kittonkhola (1985) and Chaka (1991) are two well-known among many such dramatic works by Deen, where attempts to decolonise Bengali theatre and drama through newer forms, structures, subject-matters, and even punctuation are obvious. This paper, by studying Kittonkhola and Chaka, explores Selim Al Deen’s counter-modernist struggle for self-identity of Bengali theatre and drama. Deen’s use of dvaitadvaita style, fusion, and non-western punctuation are, on the one hand, a postcolonial resistance to European modernity and, on the other hand, stylistically postmodern. Further, they symbolise his search for a distinct identity of Bengali theatre.