2025-Kobor-Theke-Uthe

 Welcome to BAAT’s presentation of Kobor Theke Uthe (Rising from the grave)! 

Let us introduce you to Munier Choudhury, a playwright, political dissident and eminent intellectual of Bangladesh, who wrote an iconic play ‘Kobor’ (The Grave)  in 1953, during his confinement in Dhaka jail for his participation in the Bengali Language Movement. This play drew thousands of Bengali youths to the cause of protecting sovereignty of mother-tongue and fight towards making Bangla a one of the state languages of Pakistan. 

‘Kobor theke Uthe‘ (Rising up from grave) draws inspiration from Choudhury’s landmark literature and aims to make the audience aware of linguistic politics in the Indian subcontinent as we thread the different historic episodes since 1800 to realize how language politics are still in action, even today.

SCENE 1: Murda Fakir (a dead ascetic) is the protagonist from the original play ‘Kobor’ who comes to a graveyard to call upon the martyrs of 21st Feb, 1952 to come back to life and fight against the Urdu language oppressors of West Pakistan. He takes the audience in a time travel back to the days where we see how the British colonists used language as a means to divide the Hindus and Muslims, thereby deepening the religious fault lines. 

SCENE 2: Set around 1795-1800, in Fort William Calcutta. Governor General of East India company, Lord Wellesley meets a Scottish doctor turned linguist, John Gilchrist. Gilchrist brings to Wellesley’s attention on how difficult it is to rule the vast land of north India where people speak similar yet different languages. They discuss how converging all languages to a single language which they called ‘Hindustanee’ would make their administration easier. The plot thickens as he explains how this new language will bear two faces – one resembling Sanskrit in Devnagari script and – the other resembling Persian and Arabic in Persian script. The first version ‘Hindi’ will be a language of the Hindus and the latter for the Muslims. Giving two distinct identities in their languages will keep Hindus and Muslims from sharing their stories with each other. At the same time the new artificial duo-languages will secede the practice of Persian and Sanskrit as native languages, thereby alienating the natives from their roots and heritage. Very diabolical plot!

SCENE 3: Set in 1946-1949, we are in Curzon Hall Delhi, at the backdrop of a Constituent assembly. At the outset of Indian constitution in a political arena, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Raghunath V. Dhulekar and  T.A. Ramalingam Chettiar debate on the topic of an official Indian native language. Nehru proposes English to be abolished as the official language of independent India and adopt ‘Hindustanee’ instead, sharing the vision Gandhi, the father of the nation. He saw this language at the confluence of Hindi and Urdu, thereby be a common vernacular for both Hindus and Muslims. This scene shows how our founding fathers were deceived by linguistic identity the Britishers bestowed upon us. Dhulekar proposes Hindi to be the official language instead, since the muslims had already formed Pakistan where they adopted Urdu language. Ramalingam Chettiar opposes Hindi to become sole official language, as the non-hindi speaking majority of the country will struggle. The debate sessions led to Article 343 of constitution – the ‘Official Language Act’ which continued English as the official language for limited time and introduced Hindi as a second official language, while reserving official status for 14 other national languages in the Schedule VIII of the article.

SCENE 4: This scene is set in 1948-1952 in Dhaka, Bangladesh and starts with Jinnah’s speech at the Dhaka racecourse, encouraging the people of then east Pakistan and now Bangladesh, to accept Urdu as the national language and forsaking Bengali, their mother tongue. When the people of East Pakistan disagree to this and come out in mass protests, the Government resorts to violent police oppression to impose Urdu and  suppressing the dissent. This eventually leads to the infamous genocide of 21st Feb, which is now celebrated by UNESCO as the ‘International Mother Tongue Day’.

SCENE 5: Murda Fakir comes back creating a deja vu, urging the spirits of 21st Feb martyrs to rise up from grave. He reminds them that using language as political tool is still in practice. nowadays. This time he actually wakes up the dead martyrs. Allegorically, we see the spirits dig out their forgotten history and take us all through myriads of debates and dissents in the history of Indian democracy that led to preservation of multilingual republic, backed by milestone Constitutional amendments.

SCENE 6:  Now we time travel again, this time going forward to current day India, where some nationalist politicians and their pet news media promote the adoption of Hindi as the single official language, blurring the difference of National language vs an official one. The protesters of 21st Feb, in their current incarnations, counter such propaganda, backed by data and information. These perpetrators of such misinformation are spooked by all the loud protests led by common people who are now empowered by their knowledge of true history. They flee from stage as the protestors celebrate by praising our nation in different languages and singing the Indian national anthem that champions the dream of unity in linguistic and racial diversity. 

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