Staging the Invisible: Communalism, Violence, and Contemporary Indian Urban Life Sanjay Kumar

Theatre has always been one of the most powerful media of sensitization and social communication in India. Communal violence and conflicts arising out of caste, religious, and gender identities have found a unique resonance and representation in post-Independence Indian theatre. In a multi-cultural, multi-religious and geographically vast and diverse country like India, civic education assumes special significance. More than one-third of the population is still not literate, yet possesses a variety of rich folk and traditional cultural practices, which are full of performative potential. Moreover, in general, most of the Indian languages have a long tradition of oral narratives, which have been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Though a rural/urban divide still determines many of the issues related to mainstream education in India, rapid urbanization and large-scale migration to the big cities, has made ‘education in the cities ’ an important concern as much of the State and the Non-Governmental Sector. In the context of ‘civic education in divided societies’, in the Indian context, focusing on the urban scenario is relevan