For a housing society set up by journalists, Press Enclave in Saket, New Delhi, has played an unexpectedly important supporting role in Delhi’s theatre history. It was home to theatre critic, printer and publisher Rajinder Paul and his wife Sunita who took over the press after he passed; theatre critic Kavita Nagpal and her singer-actor husband Vinod Nagpal; actor Veena Mehta; and translator Santwana Nigam and director Rajinder Nath, partners in life and theatre.

Rajinder Paul was publisher-editor of Enact, perhaps India’s first, and finest, English journal dedicated to theatre. He served as vice-chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, and it was during his tenure (with Girish Karnad as chairman) that the SNA organised a theatre festival in 1989 to mark Jawaharlal Nehru’s centenary, which brought back to stage some of the finest productions of post-Independence theatre. One of the Pauls’ close friends was Mumbai-based theatre director Satyadev Dubey, who often stayed with them at their Press Enclave residence when he visited Delhi. 

Satyadev Dubey was the one-man, unofficial talent-matching agency of Indian theatre. He would seek out new plays and playwrights; often mentor them in his unique, somewhat idiosyncratic manner; and the moment he spotted a play with potential, he would either direct it himself, or find a director for it. Most crucially, Satyadev Dubey encouraged translations of Indian plays. 

Rajinder Paul was equally committed to translation, as was Rajinder Nath. Every issue of Enact included an English translation of an original Indian play, and Abhiyan, Rajinder Nath’s theatre company, only produced Indian plays in Hindi translation. Coincidentally, both Enact and Abhiyan were founded in 1967, when Paul was 27 and Nath was 33. 

Like Dubey and Paul, Rajinder Nath was also devoted to the mission of getting plays translated. And there were excellent translators at hand – Vasant Dev from Marathi to Hindi, and Santwana Nigam and Pratibha Agarwal from Bengali to Hindi. Then there was Girish Karnad, who translated many of his own plays from Kannada to English, making it easier for them to be translated into other languages. These women and men were missionaries whose great contribution to Indian theatre as translators or enablers of translations was recognised neither monetarily nor through awards or fellowships. 

A decade previously, as a student, Rajinder Nath, who passed away on July 24 at the age of 91, had been founder-president of what is arguably the top undergraduate theatre society in Delhi University, Kirori Mal College’s The Players, in 1957. 

The Players, which has been a stepping stone for generations of theatre and film professionals, was founded by a teacher at the college, Frank Thakurdas. Those who knew him recall Frank Thakurdas as a tall, energetic, Punjabi Christian, a workaholic and hard taskmaster. In 1951, he co-founded one of Delhi’s earliest theatre repertories, Unity Theatre, with Saeed Jaffrey, who became a successful actor in England and India. It is a pity that there is no writing on Thakurdas, an unsung hero of Indian theatre.

Under Rajinder Nath, Abhiyan produced a number of groundbreaking plays. As a child, I remember watching, enthralled, his productions of many of them. His most popular productions were Vijay Tendulkar’s Ghasiram Kotwal (1974, with music by Mohan Upreti and a stellar cast that included Vinod Nagpal as sutradhar, Ram Gopal Bajaj as Ghasiram, Om Puri as Nana Phadanvis, Sunita Paul as Lalita Gauri, and Govind Deshpande as the first brahman) and Jaat Hi Poochho Sadhu Ki (1978, with S.M. Zaheer, Veena Mehta, and Subhash Gupta). I also recall watching Mohit Chattopadhyay’s Guinea-Pig (with Kulbhushan Kharbanda); Girish Karnad’s Nagamandala; and Govind Deshpande’s Uddhwasth Dharmashala (first with Om Puri and then with S.M. Zaheer) and Andhar Yatra (with Uttara Baokar).

Nath’s comrade in arms was Santwana Nigam (1933-2019). She was born in Dehradun in an educated, liberal Bengali family. She had begun writing short stories as a young woman, and some of her stories were published in well-known Hindi magazines such as Sarika, Dharmayug and Kadambari. She was a double MA – in English Literature from Dehradun and in Linguistics from Delhi University – and taught Hindi to research students from the United States at the American Institute of Indian Studies for three decades. Nigam was a dedicated theatre person, and one of the finest translators of plays from Bengali to Hindi. 

Abhiyan produced 12 plays translated by her (one of which was by Girish Karnad, translated from English), and she is credited as assistant director for about twenty productions. Her contribution to Abhiyan, however, goes well beyond her official credits. Hers was an unwavering creative support to Rajinder, often making sharp interventions during rehearsals, and she took on many of the silent, outwardly invisible responsibilities that are part of the running of a theatre group.

Abhiyan’s productions reflected their director’s personality – quiet, efficient, effective, non-flashy. He called his approach ‘minimalist’ – pruning away everything that was non-essential. In 1990, when he decided to produce Govind Deshpande’s Chakravyuha (originally Andhar Yatra in Marathi), he asked if I would play Ashwath, the young student radical. ‘Asked’ only notionally, since his requests inevitably came with the quiet, gentle authority of a command. In any case, I was hardly going to refuse. I had grown up watching his plays, and the cast included Uttara Baokar, S.M. Zaheer and Subhash Gupta, actors who I had long admired. 

Unlike many other directors I had worked with, Rajinder Nath at work was not an animated presence. For the most part, he sat leaning back on his chair, listening intently to actors read their lines, occasionally suggesting a change of tone, or pointing to a subtext or meaning that had escaped us. Even when we started exploring our possible moves, he hardly ever ‘directed’ us. At most, he would ask me why I was making a certain move. If my response satisfied him, he’d let me keep it. If not, he’d ask me to try something different. 

Sadly, about a few days before the show was to open, the anti-Mandal Commission protests gripped Delhi. Delhi University, where I studied, was under siege by the protestors, and public transport badly affected. The opening was postponed. By the time Abhiyan got auditorium dates again, my MA Final examinations were looming large and I had to reluctantly step out of the production.

Rajinder Nath was the director of the Shree Ram Centre for Art and Culture twice, from 1976-1981, and again from 1983-1989. A not so well-known fact is that the SRC Basement Theatre, which was a lifeline for amateur groups in Delhi for decades, was his innovation. He turned what was originally meant to be storage space into an intimate theatre – an early instance of theatre in a ‘found space’ in Delhi. The Basement Theatre functioned for over two decades. He established the SRC’s annual theatre festival, set up the repertory company, and instituted an annual lecture. The inaugural lecture was delivered by Utpal Dutt, and subsequent speakers included Habib Tanvir, Vijaya Mehta, Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, Govind Deshpande, Ashok Ranade, and others.

In 1999, I again got a call from Nath with a command disguised as a request. The National School of Drama had decided to start a theatre journal, and had asked him to be the editor. 

Would I assist him? I was an editor in a publishing house and I was a theatre person, so once again, there was no reason to demur. I worked with him for some five or six years, bringing out issue after issue, till there was a change of guard at the NSD and the new director booted Rajinder Nath out, with no reason provided. The journal lay dormant for a long time after that, was revived for an issue or two, and became dormant again. 

Interacting with authors who wrote for Theatre India, as the NSD’s English journal was called, made me realise how much respect Rajinder Nath commanded in the theatre community. Most people readily agreed to write when he called them; and he had a way to get those who declined the first time to eventually relent. There was a directness about him which, when combined with his gentle and caring nature, made him a person you could look up to without feeling awed by. 

Rajinder Nath, who taught at Delhi University’s Rajdhani College from 1965 to 1994, lived a life utterly devoted to theatre. It is people like him, and some others mentioned in this tribute, who have enriched Indian theatre by their decades of selfless, dogged service with no financial reward and little, if any, recognition. His passing, a day after the death of Manipuri theatre director Ratan Thiyam, is a big loss to Indian theatre, and particularly to the city of Delhi.

Sudhanva Deshpande is an actor and director with Jana Natya Manch, Delhi, and editor with LeftWord Books. He is the author of ‘Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi’.

Note: Rajinder Nath and Girish Karnad's designations in the Sangeet Natak Academy have been corrected since publication.

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