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How the Parsis Shaped Theatre in Colonial Bombay
How the Parsis Shaped Theatre in Colonial Bombay
Flops, frauds or community disapproval did not prove obstacles to the growth of the theatre enterprise.
Elphinstone Circle in Bombay in the 1870s. Photo: Lee-Warner Collection/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
When one thinks of Horniman Circle – the ring of elegant old buildings in south Mumbai – today, several associations spring to mind: the glossy storefronts of Starbucks and Hermes – the temples of neoliberal globalism; men snoozing on the garden’s shaded benches – a respite from Mumbai’s prickly afternoon heat; and the ghosting of an all but forgotten colonial past in the worn-out balustrades framing the round.
Article by Rashna Nicholson | The Wire
Yet few appreciate that this unassuming area, one of the better-conserved vestiges of the city’s history, was, more than a century ago, the pulsing heart of Old Bombay. While St Thomas Cathedral, consecrated in 1718, marked Bombay’s centre, the city’s first theatre – the other primary point of congregation for European residents – stood merely a few feet away.
Johnson, William; Henderson, William, The Cathedral, Bombay, 1855-1862. Photo: SMU Central University Libraries/Public Domain
According to the Bombay Times of 1842, the Bombay Amateur Theatre that ‘owed its origin to an earlier period than any Theatre in India’ was built in 1770 at the old Bombay Green, a location that was ‘a mere receptacle for rubbish’ granted without condition of any kind. The theatre initially served as the location for all significant socio-cultural events for the English community as Bombay possessed no Town Hall at the time.
Kumud Mehta notes that at this early stage when the Bombay Amateur Theatre’s membership comprised East India Company officers, women did not hesitate to perform. Nevertheless, as Bombay grew from town to metropolis this practice was discontinued, males having to impersonate the female parts. Crucially, this change in onstage personnel echoed larger demographic shifts offstage – Indians had begun to frequent the theatre.
Shortly after the introduction of English education in Western India, on August 3, 1821, a dress box seat was purchased by a ‘Balcrustnath Sunkerset’. A few months later, Hormusjee Bomanjee and Sorabji Framji purchased tickets for The Rivals. Meanwhile, the theatre that had incurred significant debts due to the disproportionate indulgences of its stage management, began to receive donations from the wealth seṭhīās for its upkeep, thus further reflecting the development of a diverse theatre-going public.
Francis Frith, Elphinstone Circle Bombay, 1850s-1870s. Photo: Wikipedia Commons
The decline of the Bombay Amateur Theatre
But the theatre would not last for long. By the time the theatre’s last manager, William Newnham – an outstanding figure in the civil service – retired, its debt was upwards of Rs 33,000. Consequently, the government resolved to liquidate Bombay’s much loved first theatre. In the beginning, its books, props, painted backdrops, and furniture were auctioned for the trifling amount of Rs 2,133, and subsequently, in 1835, the building was sold via Jamsetji Jeejeebhoy to Bomanjee Hormusji Wadia for Rs 52,000.
With the sale of the theatre and the discharging of its debts, the left-over sum due to the public amounted to Rs 30,000 and lengthy was the debate as to the best way to put it to use for the benefit of the ‘public’. While some insisted on the erection of a market, an Indian hospital or a permanent spot for the Bombay General Library, others contended that as the theatre had been founded and nurtured exclusively by the city’s European residents the surplus should be used for the establishment of a grammar school for Europeans.
Finally, the government conceded to a memorial, with the merchant philanthropists Jagannath Shankarsheth and Framjee Cowasjee heading the signatories, that demanded that the balance realised from the sale of the old theatre be used for the erection of a new one. A plot in Grant Road in the heart of what was then known as the ‘Native Town’ was gifted by Shankarsheth, as the site for the theatre, and although many European residents expressed forebodings of the ‘mixed’ that is, European and Indian character of the new playhouse, the Grant Road Theatre, as it came to be known, opened to much fanfare in 1845.
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At that time, the city’s refuse was deposited on either side of Grant Road making the district uninhabitable and unhealthy. The Grant Road Theatre was the only building among these flats, standing like an oasis in the desert. Kekhuśro Kābrājī, the father of the Parsi theatre reminisced, “As I was returning one night with my father from the Grant Road theatre in a carriage…a ruffian prowling about in the dark at Falkland Road, snatched my gold embroidered cap and ran away with it.”
Jagannath Shankarshet. Photo: M. Jackson/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
The Grant Road Theatre
Despite the theatre’s insalubrious location, in many ways, it may be deemed the incubator of the modern South Asian theatre and Indian cinema, as the Parsi theatre found its roots there. On Saturday, October 29, 1853, Roostum Zabooli and Sohrab was performed by the first Parsi theatrical company at the Grant Road Theatre. Thereafter, Parsi social reformists, seeking to reform the Parsis of ‘evil’ customs such as child marriage, dowry, opium addiction, and gambling, produced plays such as Nādarśā nā Lagan, Bāl Vīvā, Bad ilat no Gofo, and Ūṭhāūgīr Śurtī.
These performances were condemned and subsequently, boycotted by the traditionalist faction of the community to little avail – but the theatre had put an unstoppable cultural movement into motion. By 1858, four Parsi theatrical troupes had come into being, even as this number ‘was increasing day by day,’ resulting in 1861 in the aptly entitled phenomenon of ‘mushroom clubs’, the number of theatre companies having increased to approximately 20 in the span of three short years.
Thus, even as the English amateur theatre came under difficulties, the Parsi theatre became a profitable enterprise as observed when, in April 1859, two Parsis and two Borahs were charged for having defrauded the public. Subsequent to announcing a performance at the Grant Road Theatre and taking the entrance money, the errant boys absconded from the building.
Subsequently, the press reported of sailors who brawled and children who threw rotten eggs, slippers, mud and cow-dung on stage – a phenomenon that newspapers termed ‘dramatic mania’. In response to this perceived deterioration of the theatre and the proliferation of dramatic companies that the Gujarati periodical the Rāst Goftār bitterly described as ‘mosquitos breeding together’, the Victoria Theatrical Company – the longest running troupe of the Parsi stage – was formed.
Parsi social reformists, aching to return the theatre to its erstwhile objective of inculcating ‘morality and virtue’, produced epic Persian plays such as Bejan ane Manījeh, Rustam ane Sohrāb and Khuśru Śīrīn based on the orientalist scholarship of Franz Bopp, Max Müller, Friedrich Spiegel and Martin Haug even as actors were compelled to undergo vigorous training based on Kābrājī’s exacting standards.
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Yet the theatre also witnessed a hitherto unknown popularity: large crowds gathered on the street blocking the road before the commencement of plays and despite a number of stout doorkeepers, when the theatre’s doors were opened scores of men leaped in. Ḍaglīs tore, pāghḍīs flew, and hundreds returned as they could not find seats. The Victoria’s popularity lead not only to the construction of Bombay’s second theatre, the Victoria Theatre in Grant Road (Grant Road thus becoming Bombay’s theatre district) but also foreshadowed the Parsi theatre’s popularity across the Indian subcontinent and beyond.
The Parsi theatre’s expansion
Dadabhai Paṭel’s entry on the stage marks a pivotal moment in South Asian theatre history. Paṭel, the descendant of one of the first Parsis to have settled in Bombay and one of the few seṭhīā scions to attain the covetable M.A. title, joined the Victoria and quickly rose through its ranks to become managing director. He replaced Sassanid emperors with flying fairies, a dramaturgical transition that reflected a shift in the Parsi theatre’s objective: from the social reform of the Parsi community to profit-making and mass appeal. Increasingly, the theatre, abandoning the geographic specificity of ancient Iran, set about to produce an alternative imaginary non-occidental space somewhere between Turkey and China and, by analogy, of an imagined community somewhere in between even as the theatre’s language changed: from Gujarati to Hindustani.
On October 1871, Sonānā Mulnī Khorśed that portrayed the power and prestige of a Mughal kingdom, hīndī and sīndhī costume, and monuments such as the Taj Mahal transpired for the first time to thundering success and Khojas, Bohras, and Memons allegedly thronged the theatre. The play thus set larger wheels in motion. While other troupes followed the precedent set by the Victoria of ‘hīndī lebāś, hīndī dekhāv and hīndī ḍhapchap’, the Victoria set off for the first Parsi theatre tour outside the Bombay presidency in 1872. On February 2, 1873, news was published of Sir Salar Jung’s intention to build Hyderabad’s first proscenium-based theatre for the Victoria’s use. Thereafter, on October 11, 1873, four ‘respectable women’ graced the Victoria’s production of Indar Sabhā, an event that was proclaimed by the Parsi press as a sign of the ‘downfall’ of the theatre and of Parsi domestic well-being.
Although these changes gestated deep intra and inter-communal fissures in Bombay, the Parsi theatre experienced unmitigated expansion in these years – fanning out across the subcontinent to Delhi, Calcutta, Benares, Lucknow, and Madras where Patel grasped the opportunity of staging a scene from his company’s Śakuntala for the Prince of Wales. Dame fortune however, would only smile for a little while on the heir of the legendary Paṭel family.
The Original Victoria subsequently set off for Bangalore on December 19, 1875, where Paṭel fell mortally ill. He was hastily sent back to Bombay to the care of numerous physicians employed by his influential family only to succumb after an operation of the stomach at the ripe age of thirty-two on March 17, 1876. Thus wretchedly ended the life of the proponent of the pan-Asian Parsi theatre.
Yet the staggering influence of his work – of introducing Indo-Persian mythological stories in contemporary garb, mechanical scenery, and daredevil stunts on the South Asian stage, would persist well into the twentieth century through the medium of not only Hindustani modern drama but also the Indian cinema industry that is, ‘Bollywood’.
Rashna Nicholson is an assistant professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Hong Kong. Her book The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage: The Making of the Theatre of Empire (1853-1893) which provides the first comprehensive, archive-based history of the Parsi theatre is forthcoming in 2021.
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The curious case of Inspector Derojinsky-A White Russian in the colonial Bombay Police
The curious case of Inspector Derojinsky-A White Russian in the colonial Bombay Police
The curious case of Inspector Derojinsky: A White Russian in the colonial Bombay Police
He was most valuable officer of the Foreign Branch of the police during a period of great volatility and heightened surveillance.
The Mumbai police department has in recent times been plagued with several controversies. From the alleged illegal sharing of confidential files, dubious plots involving explosive-laden cars to accusations of concocted evidence, extortion, corruption and other nefarious activities, there has been a great deal of negative news. This brings to mind a nearly century-old story of an intriguing controversy surrounding a police officer of the Foreign Branch of the Bombay Police’s Crime Investigation Department, Special Branch.
Archival records, including confidential communication between the Bombay Police and the Home Department, court documents and newspaper reports of the time, reveal a peculiar story of how a refugee migrant officer inducted into the force came to be regarded as a spy who planted evidence to bolster the government’s case against Communist activists in the Meerut Conspiracy of 1929.
Inspector Boris Derojinksy (BW Derojinsky), formerly a member of the Russian Life Guards, was said to have fled Russia in 1920. He had fought against the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution. Facing ruin, the alleged “White Guard” (anti-Bolshevik militia), left with his family and arrived in Constantinople in August 1920, whereupon he was employed for two years with the British Section of the Allied Police Commission. His duties “were to investigate and report on cases both criminal and civil”.
‘An intelligent young man’
Given his skill with languages, he acted as an interpreter for the British police on raids. Derojinsky wished to travel onward to Siam (present-day Thailand) where a friend had promised a secure job, but due to the cancellation of the transport he could only make his way to Bombay. He arrived in the city on the troopship SS Derbyshire on March 26, 1923, with a French Laissez Passer and a recommendation letter from his former employer to the Bombay Governor and the Commander-in-Chief in Simla.
The police immediately sent information of his arrival to the Political Department of the Bombay government. On March 28, Derojinksy wrote to the commissioner of police requesting help “in obtaining a position that would enable me to live with my wife and child”. The request was granted since “he is an intelligent young man, who claims to be of a good family”, and he was appointed a probationary sergeant on April 5.
Derojinsky was appointed initially to the Water Police but the department wished that he be inducted into the Foreign Branch of the Crime Investigation Department. The Bombay police had faced embarrassment with the Charles Ashleigh case the previous year, wherein the British Comintern emissary had slipped past surveillance and conducted secret meetings. As part of an inquiry, the commissioner of police brought up the shortage of qualified European officers in the Foreign Branch who could operate in a clandestine manner gathering intelligence and consequently, Derojinky’s appointment fit well in the circumstances.
Within months, his appointment was confirmed and over the next few years he became a full inspector in 1926. As Mumbai began witnessing an influx of foreign Communist agents seeking to infiltrate trade unions and further the cause of Moscow’s (and Communist leader MN Roy’s) plans, Inspector Derojinsky would have become a very busy man.
On August 8, 1929, The Bombay Chronicle reported on the deposition of Inspector Derojinksy as a prosecution witness in the Meerut Conspiracy case proceedings the previous day. In response to the Crown counsel Langford James, the Russian policeman said that he had been in charge of the Foreign Branch for six years and had arrested British communist Benjamin Francis Bradley on March 24 that year, recovering from him various documents.
On being cross-examined by the defendant SA Dange, Derojinsky stated that he was “not a member of the White Guard” and that when in Russia, he had traded in jewellery as an occupation but not openly since that would have put him at risk with the regime. He added that he was a capitalist and had opposed the Revolution. Dange’s intention, which the Crown prosecutor objected to, was to “prove that witness had been a bad character in Russia”. When asked why the officer did not wear a uniform, Derojinsky responded that it was due to the nature of his duty.
The strategy of the defence was to attack the credibility of Derojinsky and impute that he was involved in skullduggery. Derojinsky responded that he had never been employed by the British Secret Service, did not have any expertise in printing and had “never forged Russian letters to implicate Indian workers nor was he aware of ‘anti-Soviet forgeries’”.
The next day, an explosive report of the court proceedings appeared in The Pioneer titled “Forging Russian Letters; Defence Allegations in Meerut Case; Cross-examination of the Bombay Inspector.” This deeply disturbed the British authorities. The following day August 10, The Pioneer published an editorial titled “Inspector Derojinsky”, characterising him as one of the chief witnesses for the prosecution. It stated that he had no passport when he landed in India but as the preparations for the Meerut arrests were underway in February 1929, he was naturalised as a British citizen. The timing of his being granted British citizenship seemed suspicious, the article hinted.
It further remarked that he was lucky to not have been arrested while in Russia despite conducting his secret business of selling jewellery. Ending on a caustic note, the article added that Derojinsky was to be congratulated on having found such “pleasant and congenial employment while many of his unfortunate compatriots who were also opposed to the revolution are said to be driving taxicabs in Paris, serving as waiters in night clubs on the Continent, or acting as dancing partners to elderly and wealthy ladies on the Riviera”.
‘A scurrilous ploy’
The article further infuriated the establishment who saw it as a scurrilous ploy to prejudice the public’s mind against the trial by misrepresenting Derojinsky’s role and casting aspersions on his character. The public prosecutor sought to file a contempt petition against the editor of The Pioneer, FW Wilson, saying that the article made “quite definite suggestions that Inspector Derojinsky is a man with a very dubious history” and that “one of the principal witnesses…is a Russian spy of disreputable antecedents.”
Langford James urged the secretary to the Home Department to proceed immediately against the newspaper, who in turn raised the question as to “whether action against the ‘Pioneer’ is likely to prejudice public opinion in regard to the trial more than the article itself.”
Indicating also that Derojinsky was merely a search witness and that “there is no Russian document in the case except one large poster” in relation to the imputation that he was brought in to forge Russian documents to bolster the conspiracy, Langford James pressed for urgency. Further communications resulted in the opinion that Derojinsky’s conduct and antecedents were beyond suspicion.
The Bombay Chronicle reported on August 27 that Langford James had appeared before the Allahabad High Court and argued that The Pioneer had committed gross contempt and the said articles were attempts to poison the minds of the public and prejudice a fair trial. On November 14, the editor of The Pioneer FW Wilson appeared before a judicial bench headed by the Chief Justice with an affidavit filed by his counsel (and friend) Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru saying it was not his intention to prejudice a fair trial and offered an unqualified apology.
Additionally, his counsel argued that the editorial was written in a light-hearted manner, to which the chief justice replied: “Humour is a most devastating weapon. There is a definite attempt to belittle and disparage Derojinsky and suggest that the prosecution is getting a very fishy witness.”
As the Meerut Conspiracy case unfolded over the next couple of years, a voluminous amount of evidence was presented before the court. This episode gets murkier with the defence statements of Benjamin Bradley, who Derojinsky had searched and arrested. The Bombay Chronicle carried a story on July 3, 1931, titled “Mystery of A Letter; Not Found But Planted There: Bradley’s Allegation” reporting that Bradley had said that a month after his arrest his landlord had suddenly “found” a letter “in one of the almirahs used by me and he of course immediately sent this letter to Inspector Derojinsky.”
Bradley further stated that Derojinsky’s “very name and origin introduce an atmosphere of suspicion.” The British Comintern activist added that Derojinksy was opposed to the present Russian government and like others, he has sought “willing allies in Imperialist countries.” Importantly, Bradley doubted the “Almirah letter” as it came to be known, suggesting that it was a forgery planted by the Russian officer.
A scholarly paper authored by John Tulloch and Jane Chapman on The Pioneer’s “outlaw editor” Wilson’s tenure in India argues that although his articles were widely seen as an error in judgment, it displays “a principled suspicion of the Indian police and a serious critique of the prosecution case…”
Drawing parallels to the infamous 1924 British controversy of the Zivoniev letter, which suggested that Labour Party members were colluding with the Soviets, Wilson had indicated in a column dated July 15 that it was “a White Russian forgery constructed in Berlin”. The Zivoniev letter indeed turned out to be a fake, in what possibly was a false-flag intelligence operation.
While the truth of this intriguing case may remain elusive, it is clear that the curious Inspector Derojinsky was a most valuable officer of the Foreign Branch of the Bombay Police during a period of great volatility and heightened surveillance as the British Empire battled numerous threats, overt and covert. Perhaps, there is more to Derojinsky’s shadowy role than the records reveal.
The author is a Mumbai-based writer and filmmaker with a special interest in Indian anti-colonial activists of the early 20th century.
“Midnight in a Bombay Street”, 1898.