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THE IPTA –EFFECT
IN THE HINDI CINEMA OF
THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES

Rashmi Doraiswamy

The movements launched by the Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) in 1936 and the Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association (IPTA) in 1943 were some of the most significant mass cultural movements in twentieth century India. Their effects were felt not only in the fields of literature and theatre, but also in the Bombay cinema of the time. They also exerted an influence on the Indian New Wave Cinema.

The movements were launched when, on the one hand, the struggle for Indian independence, had reached a peak, and on the other, the forces of fascism in the Second World War were knocking on the doors of the Soviet Union. The anti-imperialist struggle was linked to the anti-fascist struggle. The draft resolution of the IPTA conference in 1943 states: “The immediate problems facing the people are external aggression by the Fascist hordes who are the deadliest enemies of freedom and culture; internal repression by an alien Government which seeks to hold our people in subjection and prevent them from organizing an effective defense of their homeland; rapid disintegration of the entire economic life of our people and particularly the havoc wrought on the morale and the health of our people by the shortage of food and other essential articles; and lastly the absence of sufficient unity among the people’s forces which alone can compel the imperialist to retire, stop the economic disintegration of the country and defeat the Fascist aggressors”

Despite the fact that the movement developed in leaps and bounds across the country, it had begun to lose its all-India character by the end of the fifties. The reasons for the dissolution of this vibrant movement by 1958 were many. According to Sudhi Pradhan,

“The foreign policy of the Government of India, which moved from a pro-American position to a non-aligned stance of great material advantage, managed to create confusion among Marxists, as did the internal policy of five-year plans and other ‘progressive’ measures. This made the parliamentary path seem an attractive alternative, but in turn created its own contradiction within the movement.

The second world conference of communist parties sought to make a compromise between the Soviet and Chinese paths, and this had repercussions on the cultural situation in India as well”

However, it is clear from the accounts available that there were many internal reasons as well for the disintegration of the movement. These reasons were ideological, organisational and inter-personal.

The splitting of the communist movement through the sixties led to a splintering of the peoples’ theatre movement into group theatres, owing affiliation to one or the other of the Left parties, or having an independent Left disposition. The eighties saw the revival of the need for different groups active all over the country to re-forge the all-India character of the movement. Chandreshwar in his Bharat Mein Jan-Natya Andolan (The Peoples’ Theatre Movement in India) divides the history of the peoples’ theatre movement into three phases: The first phase (1943-1947), which saw the birth and development of IPTA; the second phase (1948-1958) that encompassed the Indian peoples’ theatre movement after Independence; and the third phase which began in 1986, and continues till today.

The Extent of Influence

Directors, actors, scriptwriters, lyricists, music directors and dance directors – a large spectrum of the talent that went into filmmaking – came from the IPTA, moulding the vision of the world that the film presented Among the well-known actors who

had an allegiance to the IPTA were Balraj Sahni, A. K. Hangal, Utpal Dutt. Well-known music directors included Anil Biswas, Salil Choudhury, Hemant Kumar and Ravi Shankar; song writers Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Prem Dhawan, Shailendra, Kaifi Azmi were associated with the PWA and IPTA; scriptwriters K. A. Abbas and V. P. Sathe were IPTA members; directors Bimal Roy, Shambhu Mitra, Mohan Sehgal were closely involved with the IPTA, as were the dance directors Uday Shankar and Prem Dhawan (who choreographed songs in Do Bigha Zameen and Naya Daur).

It is difficult to ‘quantify’ or ‘accurately measure’ the actual nature of the influence of the IPTA on the film industry. The reasons for this are many: Cinema is an industrial art form in which many economic factors, specialized skills and several individuals come together to produce a film. Moreover, the play of the public and private ideological positions taken by people who were associated with the IPTA, the dynamics of personal beliefs and their translation into creative practice, are also important factors in the evaluation of the ‘IPTA-effect’. However, it is possible to assume that whether they were members of the mass progressive movements or of the Communist party, whether they were with the movement for a short time or remained, like Kaifi Azmi, committed to Left ideals throughout their lives, the people who passed through the influence of the IPTA, did not easily forget the ideals it stood for in their cultural practice. The IPTA influence could also be felt in the works of filmmakers who were not members but were associated professionally with IPTA activists, such as Raj Kapoor who worked K. A. Abbas, V P Sathe and Shailendra; Guru Dutt who had studied dance under Uday Shankar, whose first film Baazi (1951) had script and dialogues by Balraj Sahni[viii]; and who had Majrooh Sultanpuri, Sahir Ludhianvi and Kaifi Azmi write the lyrics of his films; Vijay Anand and Dev Anand who with their brother, Chetan, set up Navketan….

During the riots that occurred at the time of Partition, K. A. Abbas describes how the IPTA, PWA and fifty other cultural organizations came together to remove the mental barriers that were dividing Bombay into ‘Hindu Bombay’ and ‘Muslim Bombay’.

“The procession was a great success. We had different trucks – one with Prithviraj Kapoor, the doyen of the film industry, and his teenaged sons – Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor – beating the drum. The IPTA truck had Balraj Sahni and Prem Dhawan and Chetan Anand and Dev Anand. The Urdu Progressive Writers were represented by Sajjad Zaheer, Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi and Majrooh Sultanpuri.

There were my friends, V.P. Sathe and Inder Raj Anand and Manmohan Sabir”

The Indian New Wave in a sense took up the unfinished agenda of the nationalist movement. Casteism, the empowerment of women, migrations from villages to cities, the impoverished state of the peasantry, class struggles, communalism, collective action, the disenchanted middle-class – these were some of the issues that were taken up by this pan-Indian movement. The ‘people’ and their problems now found a more realistic representation in the New Wave cinema. Several artistes who had had links with the IPTA and the PWA were to energise this movement as well: Utpal Dutt (who starred in, among other films, in Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome, one of the three founding films of the movement which began in 1969); Bhisham Sahni (whose Tamas was made into a film by Govind Nihalani, and who acted in New Wave films such as Saeed Mirza’s Mohan Joshi Haazir Ho and Tamas); Balraj Sahni (who acted in IPTA activist M.S. Sathyu’s Garam Hawa/1973), Kaifi Azmi who wrote the dialogues for Sathyu’s Garam Hawa and Kanneshwar Rama (1977) and Benegal’s Manthan (1976); Salil Choudhury who gave music for Basu Chatterjee’s Sara Akash (1969) and Ramu Kariat’s Chemeen, Ismat Chugtai on whose story Garam Hawa was based and who wrote the dialogues for Benegal’s Junoon (1978) and Shama Zaidi who worked with Satyajit Ray, Benegal and Sathyu on their films.

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