An interview with Mr.Vagish Jha
by Bhoomika Meling

Dr. Vagish Jha, a former student of JNU is a playwright and scriptwriter. 

Bhoomika: When and how did your association with JNU begin?

Mr. Jha: I joined JNU in 1982 as a M.A. student in C.H.S. Later, as an M.Phil student I worked on the Karnatas of East India under the guidance of Prof. Romila Thapar. Then I registered for Ph.D but could never manage to complete it due to my extra-curricular interests. Those were the times of all round students’ agitations. JNU witnessed it in 1983 under the Vice-Chancellorship of Prof. P.N.Srivastava. We even went to jail! I was in Tihar Jail for 14 days. Later the Bipin Chandra Committee was set up and changes were brought about in the deprivation points system. So that was how my JNU sojourn began.

Bhoomika: How enriching would you say your JNU years were, and how has JNU stayed with you in your life and work?

Mr.Jha: JNU is where I became very active in the cultural field. My first exposure to social work happened in Tihar Jail. GBMs with plenty of allegations and counter-allegations used to happen there too! I found that very interesting. There was an ex-JNUite called Mohanji. He had been associated with the J.P movement of 1974. He took up the mess issue in jail. I became his chief lieutenant and that was my first broad social exposure. 1983 was a zero semester in JNU. I joined SFI. It was very difficult to convince me. But there were people who did not give up on me. They did manage to convince me about ideology. The dialogue tradition was very strong in those times. But since I was not very active politically, I tried to employ it in the field of cultural activities. Some of my friends participated in a theatre workshop held by Safdar Hashmi around that time. I joined hands with them in forming a group called Campus Theatre in JNU. It had a strong presence on the campus and Sanjay Chauhan, Shahbaaz Ansari and I became a famous trio.

On the academic front, my mind was besotted by many questions. I would often pose questions of a co-curricular nature in front of Prof. Thapar such as, is there a history which can be called ’the’ history….She advised me to take a break from studies, go to Hoshangabad and join Eklavya, a group run by many JNUites. They were all engaged in revisiting history and reconstructing it. I went there and stayed for a year and participated in the laborious task of this pioneer group in education and pedagogy. I worked on teachers’ training there. I rejoined Ph.D once I returned. I also joined Blue Bells International School as a history teacher. The dimensions of cultural activism were broadening in my mind. I was also enamoured by the Gramscian concept of the Organic intellectual. This time we started Jugnu   a comprehensive cultural group which organized theatre events, seminars, music sessions discussions, etc.

At that time, Babri Masjid issue was gathering a lot of significance. So Jugnu decided to take that issue up and do something about it. I must tell you that the group was already experimenting in the field of Nukkad natak (Street theatre). I used to like the concept of nukkad natak but not the scripts. Our scripts evolved out of discussions. We would discuss problems and issues at length and then I would weave a thread of narrative around all that talk and write a natak. I do not call myself a writer because nukkad natak belongs to no single author. When riots broke out in Meerut, we were invited there to put up some nataks on the issue of communalism. But we felt that nukkad natak scripts and solutions were generally simplistic and that we had no authentic experience and hence, no right to tell what communalism is to people who had seen and felt and been victimized by the repercussions of communalism! Nukkad natak is a means to understand an issue collectively and establish a dialogue. But in practice, these nataks generally give final answers to questions as if you have a final answer. They should emphasise on the process and not on the final answers. Therefore we decided that we had to give a chance to the audience to contribute in the play. We would stop one step before a usual nukkad natak would have stopped. And we would let the audience take the final step. We would leave some creative space for the people. You see, nukkad natak is democratic in form but authoritarian/didactic in content. I tried to work my way out of authoritarianism while writing the script. I consider my audience very intelligent.

Bhoomika: While experimenting on the nukkad natak form, did you go beyond the script level and do something new at the performance level too?

Mr.Jha: Yes, we did. I don’t accept that the ideal length of nukkad natak is only 15 minutes. You can engage the nukkad audience for a longer span if you really have something worthwhile to say and if you say it in an interesting way. We did a play called Ye Pul Hil Raha Hai in Jhelum lawns. It was a 90 minutes play and it actually took 45 minutes extra in performance. Yet it was hugely successful. I know of no other theatre performance in Jhelum Lawns in which people climbed to rooftops to see the play. There was a roaring applause for a 135 minutes long nukkad natak! The title of the play had been taken from a poem by Vidrohi ji. We included many of his poems in our plays.

Nukkad natak also does not focus on character-building. We tried to understand the nuances of the characters. At that time, Sudipto Kaviraj’s concept of ’fudgy identity’ caught our imagination and we tried to express and explain this fudginess in our plays. In nukkad natak one actor often plays more than one characters but in our plays, one character was played by different actors in different scenes. So if in one scene an actor is a policeman, in the next he might be a citizen and the citizen of the last scene may be the policeman. In the midst of all these fudgy identities we would have one or two such characters also who were played by the same actor throughout. For instance, in Ye Pul Hil Raha Hai, we had an old man who was the voice of wisdom and dharma. Since his character explained the difference between dharma and communal fanaticism, he was played by one actor throughout.

Another experiment happened at the level of the issue raised in the play. Generally, nukkad natak concentrates on one single issue. But our reality is not neatly structured like that. Problems cohabit. So we did some plays which discussed multiple social problems. At that time I was reading Wittgenstein. I understood from there that there is a conflict between simultaneity of experience and linearity of language. Many things happen to you at the same time but you can talk about them only one after the other. So we thought of a natak which could portray simultaneity of experience. We created a play with three simultaneous scenes. And it was perfectly coherent….you see, we even did the absurd in the nukkad space! By the way, our first absurdist nukkad natak was a play called ’Chuha’ which had only a two and half lines long story…

Bhoomika: But you moved beyond theatre….

Mr.Jha: Yes, I got a break in the television industry around that time. Ali Bakar was making a T.V. serial called Ek Ghar Aas-Paas. He contacted me to write the serial and I accepted his offer. It was the first Indian serial on a mentally retarded child. There was a humorous Bihari character in the story which was very difficult to play. It was a very strong character too. The chosen actor could not portray it properly. So auditions were held again and I also auditioned this time. I was selected and so besides writing the script, I also acted in that serial. But I was still associated with theatre. Epics and tradition had fascinated me from the very beginning. I tried to understand the concern of the epics through theatre. Mahabharata, the serial, was very popular in those days. We did Mahabharat Extension  Draupadi Cheerharan and Ramayana  Green Hanumankatha which were direct take-offs from the serial.

In the meanwhile, I got an offer from Manju Singh who was making e serial called Ek Kahani. She was looking for amateur writers. I joined her because challenges had always excited me. So for some time, I was a “mercenary writer” in Bombay. After a point I started feeling that though I had started out with high aspirations of becoming a “fashion designer” in the T.V. world, I had been reduced to being a mere tailor. The other ex-JNUites in the industry advised me that success in television and film world was directly proportional to the extent of nonsense one could take from others. They wanted me to stay back as I was getting very good money for that sort of writing. But since I did not like it there, I came back to JNU without telling them. This is actually when I joined Blue Bells school. I taught there for two and a half years. Then I got a job as the Project Executive (Academic) in the Educational International programme under MHRD. The programme aimed at disseminating educational softwares internationally and nationally. I believed and I still believe that the government set-up works in India. It is not at all the failure it is often thought to be. For the next five years I worked on proving this through the project. I used to work very hard. In five years, through our hard work, we made it a self-sustaining programme. And that was a big mistake. The BJP government stepped in and at the acme of its success, the project was wound up lock, stock and barrel by UGC. That bitter experience disenchanted me. I decided to be on my own after that. Since then I have been floating like a cloud.

Somewhere down the line I fell head over heels in love with radio and I’m still there. I started with Worldspace 7-8 years back. They began in India with a programme on HIV AIDS for the rural listeners. I was chosen to direct and write this proramme. It was then that I came up with my finest work in the form of two shows   Umang (meant for adolescents) and Khuli Khidki (for parents in rural India). After a point, I felt that though I had worked for the adolescents, no adolescents had actually participated in the process. In a presentation in Kualalumpur, I raised this issue. We can not talk on behalf of children. An organization called PANOS International liked this idea and within two and a half years they placed funds for a programme by children. I was the trainer and producer of this programme. We selected fifty children from twenty-five interior villages of Bikaner. 50% of them are girls and out of those, 50% are married girls. We reworked the very concept of production. We even recorded on walkmans! The programme began on 18 June, 2005 on Kishore Vaani from AIR, Bikaner. The children would conceptualise, write, edit and present the show. It was a long series and it ended on 31 December, 2007. Now these kids are gathereing five rupees form every resident of their respective villages to create funds to start their own programme. A similar thing is about to begin in Bihar and Jharkhand too.

Bhoomika: How different would your work profile and perspective be, had you not been a JNUite?

Mr.Jha: It would have been entirely different. I can not think of my existence without JNU. If I had not got admission in JNU, I would not have been anywhere. Despite being a very good student, I got only 52% marks in B.A in Patna University. I would never have made it to any place where marks decided one’s fate. So JNU was a boon for me.

Bhoomika: Which characteristic of JNU do you think is most attractive?

Mr.Jha: The high level of cultural and ideological awareness in JNU attracts me the most. This is not seen anywhere else in India. To think of oneself as a citizen of the world and to be able to ask questions are the most important thing one is taught in JNU. This is the strength of JNU.

Bhoomika: Do you still go back to JNU?

Mr.Jha: Certainly. Just two days back I went there with an ex-JNUite friend of mine who simply wanted to have a bread roll at Ganga dhaba.

Bhoomika: What message would you like to give to the JNU students’ community?

Mr.Jha: JNU teaches you not how to answer questions but how to question answers. So long as you keep questioning, you keep up the spirit of JNU.