Theatricality, mediation and public space: the legacy of Parsi theatre in South Asian cultural history

Deposited with permission of the author. © 1999 Dr. David WillmerParsi theatre, which emerged in Bombay in the mid-nineteenth century, was a specifically ‘modern’ form of performing art that was informed by factors as diverse (but historically interrelated) as the British imperialisation of India, the development of capitalism in India, the Parsis’ Persian historical heritage and the wider cultural environment of India. Assuming a public cultural role that was well out of proportion to the Parsis’ extreme minority status in India, Parsi theatre soon transcended its origins in the Parsi community and became an important generic category of popular public entertainment in late-imperial South Asia. This generic categorisation has led to many conceptualisations of ‘Parsi theatre’ which ignore the Parsi origins of Parsi theatre altogether. However, the specifically Parsi origins of Parsi theatre, in the public space which Parsis played a major part in constructing in nineteenth century Bombay, enable us, while at the same time avoiding an excessively ‘ethnographic’ approach, to identify the originative characteristics of Parsi theatre that inform its powerful legacy in South Asian cultural history. In particular, it is the characteristic ‘theatricality’ of Parsi theatre that enables it to act as a mediated representation of self-identity in the public space of modern South Asia. The eclectic cultural economy of Parsi theatre has given it a ‘hybrid’ guise, enabling it to frame many different aspects of public space in modern South Asia. The continuing legacy of Parsi theatre in this respect can be seen in its cultural successor, the popular Indian cinema, in which a publicly-mediated representation of ‘community as nation’ has been constructed. However, the ‘hybridity’ of Parsi theatre is a publicly-mediated representation of specific historical conditions such as imperialism and capitalism, informed by Parsi theatre’s characteristic sense of theatricality, rather than a representation of a hybrid sense of self-identity (whether of the Parsi community itself or of the broader South Asian community/nation). This enables us to develop a critique of the notion of ‘hybridity’ as it has been denoted in postcolonial theory, and to question the intimate, essential ‘hybridisation of self’ that marks the postcolonial conception of the term. Postcolonial theory’s emphasis on the process and experience of ‘colonisation’ is countered in this critique by the processes of ‘imperialisation’ and ‘capitalisation’ and the active response to them on the part of Parsi theatre’s community. In this way, a greater sense of subjectivity and agency can be attributed to the historical actors in question, and the resilience of the South Asian cultural economy in the face of ‘global’ historical processes can be duly recognised