ABSTRACT
The purportedly socio-politically conscious Bengali group theatre has maintained an almost uncanny absolute silence on the partition of India in 1947. This chapter is an examination of some of the possible reasons behind this silence on the Bengali theatre stage. The chapter argues that the Eastern partition as opposed to its Western counterpart was imagined more as a positive outcome of the political uncertainties leading up to Indian independence rather than as the splintering of a single nation. This attitude amongst the Bengali bhadralok samaj or genteel society led to social as well as religious leaders contending that the partition of Bengal was beneficial to the sustenance of a ‘pure’ Hindu Bengali identity. The chapter demonstrates using the example of two of the only plays that address the partition of 1947 – Ritwik Ghatak’s Sanko and Dolil – that the Bengali Hindu majority in West Bengal and the theatre that this community found comfort through the trauma of the partition by adopting silence rather than documenting the traumatic events that unfolded as the Indian subcontinent was being spliced into two.
