Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) is the oldest association of theatre-artists in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. IPTA was formed in 1943 during the

British rule in India The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...

, and promoted themes related to the

Indian freedom struggle The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged from Bengal. ...

. Its goal was to bring cultural awakening among the people of India.

Beginning

The Bangalore unit of IPTA was formed in 1941. IPTA was formed on 25 May 1943 at the National conference of theater artists held at the Marwari school,

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

in response to the need for theater artists to become part of the Indian freedom struggle. Its origins lay in the first Progressive Writer's Association Conference that was held in 1936, the establishment of the Youth Cultural Institute at Calcutta in 1940, and the setting up of the People's Theatre in Bangalore by Anil De’ Silva in 1941. Its initial members consisted of various progressive cultural troupes, theatre groups and other progressive cultural activists. The name People's Theatre was suggested by the renowned scientist Homi Jahangir Bhabha who was in turn inspired by Romain Rolland's book on the concepts of People's Theatre. Its initial activities included street plays organized by Binoy Roy of the Bengal Cultural Squad to inform people of the 1942 manmade famine in Bengal. Their ski included a choir ‘Bhookha Hai Bengal’ created by Vamik Jaunpuri and other songs and plays. The squad included musician Prem Dhawan, drum player Dashrath Lal, singer Reva Roy and actress Usha Dutt. Motivated by this squad, several other cultural groups were formed including the Agra Cultural Squad. IPTA was subsequently formed to organize these local groups at the national level. Ideologically these groups were inspired by the left movement and the then General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, P.C. Joshi and the General Secrtetary of the Progressive Writers' Association Sajjad Zaheer.

Initial members

Some of the initial members of the group were

Prithviraj Kapoor Prithviraj Kapoor (born Prithvinath Kapoor; 3 November 1906 – 29 May 1972) was an Indian actor who is also considered to be one of the founding figures of Hindi cinema. He was associated with IPTA as one of its founding members and establish ...

Bijon Bhattacharya Bijon Bhattacharya ( bn, বিজন ভট্টাচার্য; 17 July 1906 – 19 January 1978) was an Indian theatre and film actor from West Bengal. He was an eminent playwright and dramatist. Bhattacharya was born in 1906 at Farid ...

Balraj Sahni Brigadier Balraj (born Balasegaram Kandiah) was a senior commander of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Early life Balraj was the fifth and youngest child of Kandiah and Kannagias. He received his primary education in Kokkuthoduwaai ...

Ritwik Ghatak Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (; 4 November 19256 February 1976) was a noted Indian film director, screenwriter, and playwright. Along with prominent contemporary Bengali filmmakers Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha and Mrinal Sen, his cinema is primarily remembe ...

Utpal Dutt Utpal Dutta () (29 March 1929 – 19 August 1993) was an Indian actor, director, and writer-playwright. He was primarily an actor in Bengali theatre, where he became a pioneering figure in Modern Indian theatre, when he founded the "Little The ...

Khwaja Ahmad Abbas Khwaja Ahmad Abbas (7 June 1914 – 1 June 1987) was an Indian film director, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist in Urdu, Hindi and English. He won four National Film Awards in India. Internationally, his films won the Palme d'Or (Golden ...

Salil Chowdhury Salil Chowdhury (19 November 1925 – 5 September 1995) was an Indian music director, songwriter, lyricist, writer and poet who predominantly composed for Bengali, Hindi and Malayalam films. He composed music for films in 13 languages. This incl ...

, Pandit

Ravi Shankar Ravi Shankar (; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known export of North Ind ...

, Jyotirindra Moitra, Niranjan Singh Maan, S. Tera Singh Chan, Jagdish Faryadi, Khalili Faryadi, Rajendra Raghuvanshi Safdar Mir, Hasan Premani,Amiya Bose,

Sudhin Dasgupta Sudhin Dasgupta ( bn, সুধীন দাশগুপ্ত; 9 October 1929 – 10 January 1982) was a prolific Bengali music director, lyricist, and singer. He worked in various other Indian languages, such as Hindi, Assamese and Oriya ...

etc. The group was formed in 1942, in the background of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, with

Bengal famine of 1943 The Bengal famine of 1943 was a famine in the Bengal province of British India (present-day Bangladesh, West Bengal and eastern India) during World War II. An estimated 0.8 to 3.8 million Bengalis perished, out of a population of 60.3 millio ...

and starvation deaths in India on the one hand and repression by the colonial masters in the wake of the

Quit India Movement The Quit India Movement, also known as the August Kranti Movement, was a movement launched at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee by Mahatma Gandhi on 8th August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British rule in ...

and the aggression by the fascist powers on the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

on the other. An All India People's Theatre Conference was held in

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

in 1943 where the group presented its idea and objective of representing the crisis of the time through the medium of theatre and to help people understand their rights and duties. This conference led to the formation of committees of IPTA across India. The movement hit not only theatres, but also cinema and music in Indian languages.Now it is the cultural wing of Communist Party of India (CPI) Muktibodh Rashtriya Natya Samaroh

Break up and legacy

IPTA Mumbai was another offshoot that has existed over the last six decades and continue to produce dramas till date. IPTA offshoots exist in other parts of India as well. Group theaters like ''

Nandikar Nandikar ( bn, নান্দীকার) is a theatre group in India. The group has its headquarters in Kolkata in the state of West Bengal, but works around the world. History Nandikar's story begins on 29 June 1960 at maternal uncle's house ...

'', ''Spandan'' of Kolkata still produce their dramas often in the line of the IPTA movement, and recently there has been effort to start a similar movement inspired by the IPTA.

IPTA in West Bengal

At present IPTA West Bengal is a running organisation led by IPTA West Bengal State Committee. The Secretary is Sri Dibyendu Chattopadhyay, President Sri Hiranmoy Ghosal, Asst. Secretary Sri Ashis Deb and Abhijit Ghosh. There are many cultural personalities like mass singer Kankan Bhattacharjee, Shankar Mukherjee, Debidas Tarafder,Mandira Bhattacharya,Sangita Roy Chowdhuri,Shurti Narayan,Subhaprasad Nandi Mazumder,Santosh Karmakar,Ashim Bandyapadhyay,Supatha Basu,Firoj Ahmed,Soma Chand,Srupratik, Sriparna Mitra, Swapna Banerjee, Manudhirity Kritaniya,Ashok Mukherjee,Biplab Roy, Anjan Chatterjee, Haimantika Roy,Kamal Ghosh,Kunal Dey,Rekha Hembram, Pradip Roy Chowdhury,and many others. Dramatist: Piyus Sarkar,Tapan Hazra,Ashis Chatterjee,Manish Ghosh,Jayanta Chakraborty,Shyamal Bhattacharya,Paritosh Bhattacharya,Shibankar Chakraborty, Actor: Samudra Guha, Subhajit Dhar,Bolanath Mukherjee, Musumi Joarder,Rubi Gandhi, Bapi Dasgupta,Somya Bhowmik,Madhuja Ghoshal, Atanu Mandol,Abhijit Chatterjee,Sandhya Halder,Goutam Saha and others. Dancer: Ashis Deb,Kakoli Deb, Dona,Iti,etc. Film Maker Manish Ghosh, Piyush Sarkar, Pradip Chakraborty etc.There are 23 District Committees under this organisation and there are approximately 11,000 Artist members in this organization. IPTA W B has been reorganised in its 3rd conference held on 1967 at Kolkata Bagbazar reading room Library.

IPTA in Assam

The Assam chapter of IPTA, which worked for the development of humanity through culture, was formed in 1947.

Hemango Biswas Hemanga Biswas (14 December 1912 – 22 November 1987) was an Indian singer, composer, author and political activist, known for his literature in Bengali and Assamese, advocacy of peoples music, drawing from genres of folk music, including Bhat ...

, the founder secretary of the chapter, worked with some of the prominent personalities of the state such as Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Bishnu Prasad Rabha and

Dr Bhupen Hazarika Bhupen Hazarika () (8 September 1926 – 5 November 2011) was an Indian playback singer, lyricist, musician, poet, actor, filmmaker and politician from Assam, widely known as ''Sudha Kontho'' (meaning cuckoo, literally "nectar-throated"). His ...

among others. Bhupen Hazarika began close association with IPTA soon after returning from the United States in the 1950s. The golden period of IPTA, from 1952 to 1962, coincided with the golden days of Hazarika's musical career. It was during this period that he composed some of his immortal numbers, including Dola Re Dola, Rongmon Macholoi Gol, Manuhe Manuhor Babe and others. Biswas and Hazarika jointly organized the third Assam conference of IPTA in 1955, when the likes of Balraj Sahni, Salil Chowdhury and Hemanta Mukherjee participated, among others. Some of the famous plays presented by IPTA were Sonali Dhanani, Seujia Kuhipaat, Tofaan, Navaprabhat, Sapasalor Seka etc. and many shadow plays like Poharaloi, Amar Jatra, 15 Augustor Ahban and Tirut Singh. In the 21st century, plays like Sadgati (Munchi Premchand), Dur Deshor Kotha, Kio (Phani Sarma), Arjun Tolir Dhumuha (Deb Kumar Saikia) and

An Inspector Calls ''An Inspector Calls'' is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in the Soviet Union in 1945 and at the New Theatre in London the following year. It is one of Priestley's best-known works for the stage and is con ...

in 2019 directed by

Prodyut Kumar Deka Prodyut Kumar Deka (born 18 April 1978) is an Indian film director, Screenwriter and Author residing in Assam, India. His films include Dhunia Tirutabur, Samiran Barua Ahi Ase, Surjasta, Borosi, Chiyahir Rong, Ji Golpor Ses Nai and The Go ...

were staged in different parts of the State. The Assam chapter celebrated the birth centenary of its founder secretary Hemango Biswas in 2012. On the occasion of platinum jubilee of IPTA, the chapter organized a drama festival on 11–12 March in 2019 at District Library, Guwahati. Two plays Laalchurni and Coffee Housot Apeksha (Laxmi Narayan Lal) respectively were staged during the two day event.

Notes

External links

* {{Indian Independence Movement Indian independence movement Theatre in India Theatrical organisations in India Culture of Kolkata Indian People's Theatre Association people Arts organizations established in 1941 Bengali theatre groups