It began as the cultural front of the Communist Party of India’s cultural front but excelled in its own right

Having committed a plethora of gargantuan blunders from the late 1930s, the Communist Party of India in 1942-43 took itself to a near non-acceptable position in India’s politics. By opposing the Quit India Movement, supporting the Muslim League’s Pakistan demand, castigating Netaji Bose, slamming other Congress leaders, and supporting Britain’s war effort after Russia was attacked by Nazi Germany, it was fast losing its mass base, especially among the educated urban middle class.

Puran Chand Joshi, the general secretary of the CPI who was busy in making a nexus with Muslim League, slowly understood that enough is not done to make a strong base of the party among farmers, daily wage-earners, and factory workers. He felt that for mass awakening and implanting the idea of communism, the shortest route is cultural entertainment through which a message of nation building can also be sent across.

It was at this time that Joshi played a masterstroke that no one ever thought of in Indian politics. Understanding the scope of capturing people’s interest in cultural entertainment, he formed a cultural front of the CPI on May 25, 1943. A bunch of extraordinarily talented creative minds, young in age and over energetic in spirit, assembled at the Marwari Vidyalaya Hall of Bombay and formed the Indian People’s Theatre Association (Ipta). It included poets, singers, musicians, theatre workers, cinema directors, music composers, shadow artists, and painters from across India but largely from Bengal, Bombay, Assam,UP, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh. It was a cultural-political unit of CPI.

It was the first of its kind in India. The name of the organisation was given by Homi Jahangir Bhaba the noted scientist. Jawaharlal Nehru congratulated the initiative by sending a message.

The idea of Ipta was not an overnight thought that crossed Joshi’s mind; it had a long history dating back to June 1935.

On June 21, 1935, an Anti-Fascist International Conference of cultural activists was held in Paris in which the Indian writer Mluk Raj Anand, who was later associated with Ipta, took part. Its replica conference was held on April 19, 1936, in Lucknow under the chairmanship of Munshi Premchand. The conference saw the birth of All India Progressive Writers’ Association and it was fully backed by the CPI.

In 1937, another cultural front named the League Against Fascism & War was formed in Calcutta and in 1941, as soon as the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany in the Second World War, another intellectual front of intellectuals named Friends of Soviet Union also came up.

Though many non-communist cultural workers joined these organisations, they were all largely motivated and mobilised by the members of CPI and the socialist party.

Many other such groups were formed in Bombay and even one by the name Ipta came up in Bangalore in 1942.

In May 1943, during the first congress of the CPI, Joshi worked for an amalgamation of all these cultural fronts and asked the workers to take the cultural heritage of India among the masses. Ipta workers were asked to shape up their creative expression in simple language and tell the reality of common people’s life, exposing pain and pangs.

Ipta’s purpose was a cultural resurgence of mass struggle against social inequality and oppression. It was born as the voice of the downtrodden but with the purpose of promoting the CPI’s political agenda. It had its first head office in Bombay which was later shifted to Calcutta in 1946. The motto of the organization was ‘People Theatre Stars the People.’ N.M. Joshi was its first president. Chitta Prasad, the famous artist, designed the logo of Ipta that features a man beating the drum, symbolising the oldest form of communication in India.

The time was ripe for Ipta to come to the street as Bengal was devastated in a manmade famine and the city of Calcutta became a city of moving skeletons. Then came the Japanese bombing and cyclone. These all inspired a group of young talented artists to express their creativity with a strong social message. ‘Bhukha hai Bangal’ was one of the earliest street plays produced by the Punjab squad of Ipta. It created a massive sensation in the Hindi belt of north India.

Ipta soon attracted a galaxy of young talents. There were writers like Ismat Chugtai, Krishan Chander, Mulk Raj Anand, Prem Dhawan, Bhisham Sahni, and Manik Bandopadhay. Theatre personalities: Shambhu Mitra, Habib Tanvir, Prithviraj Kapoor, Utpal Dutt, Tapas Sen. Musicians: Pt Ravi Shankar, Salil Chowdhury, Sachin Dev Burman, Timirbaran. Poets: Shailendra, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri. Singers: Hemant Kumar, Bhupen Hazarika, Hemanga Biswas.

Then there were film directors: Ritwik Ghatak, K.A. Abbas, Chetan Anand, Basu Chatterjee, Rishikesh Mukherjee. Dancers: Uday Shankar, Zohra Sehgal, Kameshwar. Actors: Balraj Sahni, Deena Pathak, Harindranath Chatterjee, A.K. Hangal, Karuna Bandhopadhay. In a nutshell, some of the finest talents in the field of art and culture enthusiastically joined Ipta, though it was backed by a political ideology.

Though Raj Kapoor, V. Shantaram, Saddat Hasan Manto, and Dev Anand were never official members of Ipta, all of them were very closely associated with it at many levels.

These superbly gifted men and women, apart from making their career in their respective field, had the dream of a classless, socialistic society for a new India which was awaiting its freedom.

One of the earliest works of Ipta was the music composition of Iqbal’s famous poem ‘Sare jahan se Achha’ by Pt Ravi Shankar. Ipta popularized this song by singing it at all its functions, street plays and conferences, making it almost a national anthem.

From the beginning, Ipta took out its live performance on streets by mingling with common people, walking on pavements, travelling in local trains, and assembling at marketplaces. Ipta used the marketplace, factory gate, slums, railway platform, etc., its stage for performance, gathering a huge crowd.

By doing things unconventionally and in a most creative way, Ipta made waves across India. In Bombay and Calcutta’s industrial zones, Ipta became hugely popular with its street plays, theatre and pro-people songs. In their presentation, they tactfully inserted political messages and a huge number of people were influenced. By the end of 1944, the CPI, which was a marginalised party not long ago, again gained ground.

It performed in almost all public functions, especially in Bombay’s Marine Drive on the occasion of the Marathi Stage Centenary Festival. Such was the success that The Times of India wrote on May 10, 1944, “There was nothing pointless or unnecessary in the performance at the People’s Theatre. With the limited facilities at their disposal the organisers achieved much.”

The heading of the news item was crowned with ‘Real Thing.’ The message of every single presentation of Ipta—whether it was street play, shadow dance, poetry, cinema, choir, or painting—was about communal harmony, socialism, concord, cosmopolitan culture, and social awareness.

‘People’s Theatre Show: Unity Main Theme,’ a report published in The Times of India on October 25, 1947, said, “The message of Hindu Muslim unity was the central theme of a programme on variety entertainment staged on Friday by the Indian People’s Theatre Association.”

Meanwhile Ipta entered the world of cinema as well. By 1946, Ipta members had done two films. Neecha nagar, released on September 29, 1946, was directed by Chetan Anand. The other was Dharti ke lal; released on August 30, 1946, it was directed by K.A. Abbas.

(The second part of the article will be carried tomorrow)

(The views expressed are personal.)