Tanika Gupta: Historical Plays

The Waiting Room; Great Expectations; The Empress; Lions and Tigers

Tanika Gupta

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786825469
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

Four ground-breaking plays that explore the complex relationship between England and India over more than a century, weaving together personal and political narratives. The Waiting Room: Priya Banerjee is dead, but her life is far from over. She has just three days left to roam the earth before she can go on to the 'Waiting Room' of spirits. As she reluctantly watches and listens to her family, Priya is guided by a droll and increasingly impatient immortal soul in the guise of her Bollywood idol, Dilip Kumar. Great Expectations: Relocating Pip's extraordinary journey to nineteenth-century India, this coming-of-age story, evoking some of Dickens' most colourful characters, is faithful to the period of the book and the richness of Dickens' language – a vivid theatrical retelling of a universally loved masterpiece. The Empress: It is the Jubilee! Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, 1887. At Tilbury Docks, Rani and Abdul step ashore after the long voyage from India. One has to battle a society who deems her a second-class citizen, the other forges an astonishing entanglement with the ageing Queen who finds herself enchanted by stories of an India she rules but has never seen. Lions and Tigers: Based on the true story of Tanika Gupta's great uncle and freedom fighter Dinesh Gupta, the play charts the Dinesh's emotional and political awakening as this extraordinary 19-year-old pits himself against the British Raj. Winner of the James Tait Black Award in 2018.

LIONS AND TIGERS

This play is dedicated to the memory
of my Great Uncle Dinesh Gupta

To his brothers Jyotish and Pritish who never forgot him

And to my father, the late Tapan Gupta
who gifted me Dinesh’s prison letters

Lions and Tigers was first staged in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe, London, on 23 August 2017. The cast was as follows:

Mahatma Gandhi Esh Alladi

Badal Gupta / Ram Raj Bajaj

Swann / Mills / Colonel Davis / Lord Birkenhead Adam Best

Bimala Sudha Bhuchar

Jawaharlal Nehru / Binoy Bose Jaz Deol

Subhash Bose / Jyotish Gupta / Watchman Tony Jayawardena

Charles Tegart / Lord Irwin / Executioner Jonathan Keeble

Kamala Shalini Peiris

Dinesh Gupta Shubham Saraf

Additional roles played by the company

Musical Director Arun Ghosh
Musicians Arun Ghosh and Sarathy Korwar

Director Pooja Ghai

Designer Rosa Maggiora

Composer Arun Ghosh

Movement Director Wayne Parsons

Fight Directors Rachel Bowen-Williams & Ruth Cooper-Brown

Assistant Director Milli Bhatia

Acknowledgments

Thanks to: Emma Rice, Pooja Ghai, Roxana Silbert, Rosa Maggiora, Sita Brahmachari, Niku Archer and the wonderful drama team at The Globe Theatre for helping me along the way.

And a special thanks to David Archer for systematically nagging me over the decades to write this play.

A BRIEF TIMELINE OF SOME KEY EVENTS
IN INDIAN POLITICS LEADING TO INDEPENDENCE

1600
The East India Company is established.

1757
The Battle of Plassey. British troops in the service of the East India Company defeat the French. From hereon, the East India Company rules India as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Government.

1857
India’s First War of Independence is ultimately a failed attempt by Indians to rise up against the invading British and East India Company. Termed ‘The Indian Mutiny’ by the British, it is a bloody war to unite India against the invading British.

1858
The Government of India Act is passed, which marks a new chapter in Indian constitutional history. The East India Company is liquidated and the British Crown assumes control of the company’s former revenues and powers of government in the Indian territories.

1877
Queen Victoria is ‘crowned’ as the Empress of India by Disraeli.

1885
The Indian National Congress is formed, and leads the nation in the Independence Movement in its struggle against the British Empire.

1905
The Bengal Partition. Bengal is partitioned by Lord Curzon. It separates the mainly Muslim population in the Eastern areas from the mainly Hindu population in the western areas of Bengal. Indians proclaim this as ‘Divide and Rule’ policy of the British.
Partition galvanises the Indian Congress and the ‘Swadeshi’ Movement is born, which includes boycotting British goods and public institutions, meetings and processions, forming committees, propaganda through press, and diplomatic pressure.

1906
The All-India Muslim League is established to safeguard the rights of Indian Muslims

1911
Muhammed Ali Jinnah introduces The Wakf Validation Act to place Muslim religious trusts on a sound legal footing under British Indian law.
A Government of India Act is passed, which modifies the Indian Councils Act 1909, and rescinds the Partition of Bengal (1905).

1913
Muhammed Ali Jinnah travels to Britain to meet with officials on behalf of the Congress.

Jinnah becomes the leader of the All-India Muslim League.

1914
Jinnah leads another delegation of the Congress to London.

1915
The Defence of India Act is passed. An emergency criminal law aimed at prosecuting Indian nationalists and revolutionaries during World War One. It has wide-ranging powers including preventive detention, internment without trial, restriction of writing, speech, and of movement.

1916
Muhammad Ali Jinnah helps to shape The Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the All-India Muslim League.
The All India Home Rule League is founded.

1918
Viceroy Frederic Thesiger invites Gandhi to a War Conference in Delhi.

1919
The Rowlatt Act is passed. The purpose of the act is to curb the growing nationalist upsurge in the country. This involves control of the press, arrests without warrant, indefinite detentio...