Othello as a play-within-the-film in post-independence Indian cinema1

This article aims to explore the appropriation of Othello as a play-within-the-film in three Indian movies: Anbu (Natesan 1953), Saptapadi (Kar 1961) and Ratha Thilagam (Mirasi 1963). Anbu and Ratha Thilagam are Tamil movies, whereas Saptapadi is an example of Bengali cinema. In the three films, the same scene from Shakespeare’s Othello – the murder scene – is performed as part of college theatricals. Although the films immediately associate Shakespeare with education, their appropriation of Othello goes beyond a college performance and provides insight on the main plot. The performance of the murder scene foreshadows the rest of the plot (Anbu and Ratha Thilagam), and explores racial dynamics and miscegenation in relation to the protagonists in Saptapadi. Anbu, Saptapadi and Ratha Thilagam introduce variations to the plot to add new layers of meaning. As the three films are set in postcolonial India, the use of the Shakespearean play inevitably becomes a site of negotiation between colonizers and colonized; the three films negotiate changing controversial political issues across the time period to which they all belong. Anbu, Saptapadi and Ratha Thilagam generate then a new understanding of Othello, which becomes paramount to trace the evolution of Shakespeare in postcolonial India.

In and out of Othello

Othello has been the play that seems to speak to current issues of racism and sexism for the last couple of decades. Recent Indian productions have stretched its relevancies further, particularly addressing the politics of identity, of individual and state, of belonging and othering. The 2014 award-winning Assamiya film Othello (We Too Have Our Othellos) appropriates and radicalizes the main concerns of the play to embody and critique the movements for self-determination that continue to rage in the state. The article examines this unusual Indian adaptation of Shakespeare that locates the play directly within the public sphere of the politics of the state through its singular focus on Othello as an ‘outsider’ figure paralleled by other such figures of contemporary Assamese society. It will contextualize the discussion of this film, its production and positioning within the film industry of Assam and attempt to define the nature of its adaptation. It will also glance at its similarities with the earlier film In Othello (2003), which too connected Shakespeare and Assam to illustrate the volatile configurations of the outsider/insider status in contemporary India.

‘You don’t have the right to hit anyone’: Domestic violence in Othello and Omkara

Alongside the infamous jealousy of Shakespeare’s Othello lies the domestic violence that brings the play to its dark conclusion. Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2006 Bollywood adaptation, Omkara, involves the same issues. The domestic violence, however, is present in different forms. It is a prominent part of Desdemona’s plot arc and an important element of Emilia’s backstory. Dolly’s experience mirrors that of Desdemona. However, Indu’s relationship with Langda is quite different from Emilia’s relationship with Iago. These alterations lead Indu and Langda, though not Dolly and Omkara, to different outcomes from their Shakespearean counterparts. This article contrasts the depiction of domestic violence in Othello and Omkara and examines what is gained through the change in the appropriation.

Tācippeṇ, The Dancing Girl: Entangled questions of social and aesthetic reform in a Tamil drama by Pammal Campanta Mutaliyār (1873–1964)

Pammal Campanta Mutaliyār (1873–1964) is generally regarded as the ‘father of the modern Tamil theatre’. In this article I examine how Pammal’s non-mythological and non-Shakespearean dramas – that is, what he termed his ‘social dramas’ – were woven into different domains and constituencies that saw themselves as agents for social change. I argue that his engagement with projects of civic and social reform ran parallel to his ideas about the aesthetic reform of the Tamil drama itself. Beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century, Pammal’s dramas self-consciously attempt to rid themselves of what Pammal understands as the aesthetic excesses of the Parsi-inflected Tamil theatre, including its densely musical nature and its increasingly mixed-gender cast. Tācippeṇ, The Dancing Girl (1928), a drama that deals with devadāsī reform, perhaps best exemplifies the simultaneity and intertwined nature of Pammal’s programmes. It was composed on the eve of reformer Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy’s earliest legal interventions towards the abolishment of devadāsī lifestyles and is a deeply self-reflexive work. Not only does it stage well-established tropes about devadāsī reform, but it deploys the idiom of Pammal’s new vision of the modern Tamil theatre – bereft of its musical temperament and performed exclusively by men – to do so.

V. Sambasivan’s populist Othello for Kerala’s kathaprasangam

Through the verve and beauty of V. Sambasivan’s (1929–97) recitals for Kerala’s kathaprasangam temple art form, performed solo onstage to harmonium accompaniment, Shakespeare’s Othello has become a lasting part of cultural memory. The veteran storyteller’s energetic Malayalam-language Othello lingers in a YouTube recording, an hour-long musical narrative that sticks faithfully to the bones of Shakespeare’s tragedy while fleshing it out with colourful colloquial songs, verse, dialogue and commentary. Sambasivan consciously indigenized Shakespeare, lending local appeal through familiar stock characters and poetic metaphor. Othello’s ‘moonless night’ or ‘amavasi’ is made bright by Desdemona’s ‘full moon’ or ‘purnima’; Cassio’s lover Bianca is renamed Vasavadatta, after poet Kumaran Asan’s lovelorn courtesan-heroine. Crucially, Sambasivan’s populist introduction of Othello through kathaprasangam marks a progressive phase where Marxism, rather than colonialism, facilitated India’s assimilation of Shakespeare. As part of Kerala’s communist anti-caste movement and mass literacy drive, Sambasivan used the devotional art form to adapt secular world classics into Malayalam, presenting these before thousands of people at venues both sacred and secular. In this article, I interview his son Professor Vasanthakumar Sambasivan, who carries on the family kathaprasangam tradition, as he recalls how his father’s adaptation represents both an artistic and sociopolitical intervention, via Shakespeare.

Desdemona moksham: A Shakespearean murder revisited

This article examines two performances, Othello in Kathakali and The Magic Hour, concentrating the analysis around two different choices made around a single action: the killing of Desdemona. While Desdemona is killed in the Kathakali Othello, in The Magic Hour this does not occur. The argument in this article differs from a critique that suggests Othello in Kathakali, created by Sadanam Balakrishnan and performed by the International Center for Kathakali in New Delhi, fails to nuance the inherent misogyny in the original Shakespearean text while improvising on its own conventions. A sustained counter argument is presented, which suggests that the design of the performance has enough new elements, fresh codes and reinvented conventions to address the political/racial theme of the story, and that any misogyny inherently lies not in the creator’s intentions, but rather in the Shakespearean text itself. The Magic Hour, on the other hand, negotiates the misogyny in the Shakespearean text more directly and, by choosing not to kill Desdemona, transforms the murder sequence into a scene of liberation, of moksham.

Black skin, white masks: Izzat as an appropriation of Othello

Izzat was the first mainstream Hindi film to reference Othello and has so far escaped the attention of academics who have begun researching the underexplored field of Bollywood Shakespeares. The film stars Dharmendra playing both versions of a fair- and a dark-skinned twin, which is a novel take on a Shakespearean trope. As a mainstream film, Izzat does not aspire to the pedagogical cultural capital of Shakespeare that Saptapadi does, nor does it reference the performance traditions of Othello onstage or film. However, references to Othello that seem superficial at first glance are embedded throughout the film. The only direct reference to the play is when Deepa meets Shekhar (who is pretending to be his twin Dilip) for the first time, and he sees she has been reading Othello. This sparks off a conversation about appearances and colour prejudices that is quite alien to an industry that traditionally favours light-skinned protagonists but rarely acknowledges it. Through this article, I would like to explore the ways in which Shakespearean tropes, and in particular Shakespeare’s Othello, has been used to explore postcolonial anxieties about identity in India by juxtaposing Adivasi identities with more typical urban Indian identities. The film also suggests that the colonizers have been replaced in Indian society by the urban elite who value superficial white masks and practise a racism that is much more insidious by discriminating against other Indians based on colour, caste and class. Through this exploration, I will also examine how Othello impacts the Indian psyche and why the referencing of Othello in this film points towards the many ways in which Othello is adapted and appropriated in Indian mainstream media.

Anti-Othellos and postcolonial Others in Izzat and Aastha

While Indian cinematic adaptations that attempt to recreate William Shakespeare’s Othello have received scholarly attention, practically no work has been done on films that make fleeting references to the source text while questioning its authority. This article aims to fill the gap by presenting two Hindi-language postcolonial adaptations, namely Izzat (1968) and Aastha (1997), that can be read as anti-Othello films. They challenge Shakespeare’s status as a colonial icon in independent India by terming his works as ‘rotting feudal tales’ and by subverting Othello’s murder of Desdemona. However, although men of ‘low’, mixed or ambiguous origins do not kill their wives in these two adaptations, both films still depict the marginalization of caste, class and gender Others. This article will study the tension between these on-screen Others and the anti-Othello stance.