ARAVASU: Suppose, you repeated the same question—precisely—in the same words. You would get the same answer. You ask again. Would that have helped? Yes, certainly. Each time the question and the answer were repeated, a new nuance would have arisen. Do you know, you could repeat a question and an answer without altering a syllable, endlessly, and create a whole new universe of meanings, more acceptable to you?

– Act II, The Fire and The Rain

Among the obituaries published after the demise of Girish Karnad (1938-2019), Amita Kanekar's essay “Karnad and the Limits of Nehruvian Intellectualism” stands out for its critical tone and analysis. She argues that Karnad played a crucial role in brahminising the cultural policy of India—as director of the Film and Television Institute of India, from 1974 to 1975); chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the national academy of the performing arts, from 1988 to 1993; and director of the Nehru Centre and as Minister of Culture, in the Indian High Commission, London, from 2000 to 2003—and “and thus firming the Brahminical base in which the RSS would flourish.” Kanekar argues that Karnad has done this by professionally celebrating “good” Brahminism. To unpack Kanekar's pithy analysis, I would like to revisit a brief incident from the performance history of Karnad's The Fire and the Rain

After the March 28, 1996 debut staging of the Hindi version of The Fire and The Rain as Agni aur Barkha by the National School of Drama Repertory, the headlines of English-language newspapers registered a conflict:

Karnad hits out at Prasanna for ‘impoverishing his play'
– Santwana Bhattacharya, Indian Express, 20 April 1996

Fire After the Rains: the successful staging of Agni aur Barkha has left
Girish Karnad, its playwright, fuming
– Ratnattoma Sengupta, The Sunday Times of India, 21 April 1996

Between Lines and By-Lines: high drama inside and outside the theatre
marks the staging of Agni aur Barkha
– Romesh Chander, The Hindu, 10 May 1996

One might say that at the heart of this incident is the classic tussle between the playwright and the director. Owing to the paucity of original scripts written for the post-Independence stage in India, theatre history has constantly borne witness to the bitter diatribe about who claims ownership of the play—the playwright or the director. However, in the case of The Fire and the Rain, the matter acquired a local colour in the political debates of the nineties.

The plot of the play is spread out over three acts, which according to Karnad's notes bears comparison to the structure of Aeschylus' Oresteia. It begins with the arrival of an actor at the site of a seven-year-long fire-sacrifice (agni yajna), where he seeks permission to stage a play to appease the gods and provide entertainment for the priests and the common people of the drought-ridden land. The consent of Chief Priest Parvasu is needed since his younger brother, Arvasu, will debut as an actor with this play, though he had been barred from visiting the sacrificial site owing to an allegation of parricide. When Arvasu learns the consent was granted, the action of the play moves back in time…

Arvasu, a brahmin, is seen spending time with his adivasi love-interest Nittilai, and with Andhaka, an archetypal blind old man. They are debating why Aravasu is delaying visiting the meeting convened by the leader of the Nishad community to ask for Nittilai's hand in marriage. We are told that Aravasu is held up by the promise of meeting his cousin, Yavakri, at midday. The scene shifts to Yavakri as he tries to strike up conversation with Vishakha, the wife of Arvasu, while she digs for water. It becomes evident that Vishakha and Yavakri are former lovers, who were separated when Yavakri left for a seven-year-long penance to gain “absolute knowledge.” It was then that she was married off to Parvasu—and although she spent one happy year with him, he also left her to seek immortality by presiding over the fire-sacrifice.

This reunion leads to a moment of physical intimacy, interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Nittilai and Arvasu. Breaking the awkward silence, Vishakha hurries back to her hermitage, followed by Arvasu. They run into Rishi Raibhya, the father of Arvasu and Parvasu, who suspects that something immoral is afoot between Vishakha and Arvasu. On torturing Vishakha, he is able to elicit the events that have transpired with Arvasu and it incurs the wrath of Raibhya. In a state of meditative trance, he claims to have accepted the “challenge” of Yavakri. Giving birth to a demon, Brahma Raksasha, whose purpose is to murder Yavakri, Raibhya vows that if Yavakri is able to escape this wrath for even one day, Raibhya would immolate himself.

Vishakha flees to Yavakri and begs him to seek refuge with Andhaka, but this advice is refused. Yavakri reveals that he had seduced Vishakha so as to incur Raibhya's wrath and in the ensuing duel, murder him with the help of his god-gifted knowledge. This strength is present in the enchanted water that Yavakri is carrying around. Vishakha, on realizing how she has been used as a pawn in this masculine rivalry, overturns the vessel of water and renders Yavakri powerless. He runs for his life and is murdered by the demon.

Arvasu arrives at the scene of murder, and decides that it is his brahminical duty to perform the penitentiary rites for Yavakri. This delays his arrival at the meeting of Nishads, where the ever-waiting but humiliated Nittilai marries a member of her own community. Arvasu is beaten by the Nishads when he tries to seek one last dialogue with Nittilai, and afterward returns home. That night Parvasu leaves the site of the sacrifice and goes home to talk to his wife after a seven-year hiatus. He maintains a stoic silence in the face of the questions that Vishakha raises before announcing eventually that Vishakha is the real guru and that he has much to learn from her. All of a sudden, he shoots an arrow in the direction of his father, killing him. He leaves the responsibility of penitentiary rites to his younger brother.

After performing the rites, when Arvasu tries to join the Brahmins performing the sacrifice, his brother identifies him as a demon guilty of parricide. Arvasu is tortured and thrown out of the city. Nittilai abandons her husband to heal Arvasu back to health and they reappear in the city to perform the play. The deceitful murder of Vishwarupas and Vritrasura by the Rigvedic war-god Indra forms the plot of the play within the play. As noted by the Marxist historian D. D. Kosambi, this episode can be read as a reference to the destruction of pre-Aryan methods of irrigation by the Aryans. During the performance of the play within the play, Arvasu becomes possessed of the spirit of Vritrasura and sets fire to the royal sacrificial site. Parvasu identifies with the betrayal of Indra and enters the fire to take his life. In the confusion that ensues, Nittilai's brother appears from the crowd and beheads her in an act of honour killing.

It is at this stage of the story that Prasanna, the director of the NSD repertory, performs a crucial intervention. In Karnad's original 1993 version in Kannada/English, written for the Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, Arvasu is forced to choose between the resurrection of Nittilai or the salvation of Brahma Rakshasa. Brahma Rakshasa convinces Arvasu that Nittilai wouldn't have wanted to be reborn, at the cost of a suffering spirit. Arvasu chooses the salvation of Brahma Rakshasa over Nittilai and this causes the much-awaited appearance of rain. Prasanna, however, excises these ending scenes, interpreting the character of Nittilai as representing the rights of people marginalized by their caste and gender, and believing that such people can't be rendered instrumental for the sake of propagating a Brahminical order.

Karnad wrote to the translator and producer of the play, Ram Gopal Bajaj, asking him to persuade Prasanna to redo the second half of the play “in a way which is more sensitive to the meaning of the play”, to “appoint a new director to repair damage” or to “close down the play entirely, rather than continue with what is a travesty of the play.”

Ironically, this dispute over the political meaning of the play was reduced to a clash between two Kannadiga male egos. Prasanna chose to remove his name from the program pamphlet of subsequent stagings, and Karnad and Bajaj never allowed Prasanna's modified Hindi script to make its way to the publishing stage.