Abstract
In March 1999, ten months after the nuclear testing in India and Pakistan and two months before the Kargil conflict poised the two nations at the brink of a nuclear war, Kali Theatre Company produced Black Shalwar. Rukhsana Ahmad’s dramatic adaptation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story, “Kali Shalwar,” opened at the Oval House Theatre in London on 4 March 1999. The play emerged at a global political moment that signalled the growing power of a virile, martial, and chauvinist brand of nationalism in the Indian subcontinent. It also signalled increasing violence against non-European minorities within the U.K. Black Shalwar, directed by Helena Uren, reflects upon interethnic love and betrayal at a historic juncture, marked by mounting aggression towards minorities in India as well as Britain. Ahmad explores how the porous bodies of prostitutes confound the ontological purities of ethnic identities and allow the co-mingling of religious differences. The ambivalent sense of betrayal that pervades the inter-ethnic relationship in Black Shalwar allegorizes the treatment of minorities and the crisis of secularism and multiculturalism in both the Indian subcontinent and England.
Published Version
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