Amidst protests from artists and intellectuals after a play based on a famous Orwell novel was stopped by the administration from being staged at Bansberia, in Hooghly district, West Bengal.
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Tuesday hastily tried to salvage the situation and issued a statement condemning the high-handedness of his own administration.
His party, the CPI(M), also joined him in condemning the act. However, the district administration said they had acted upon a complaint made by former CPI(M) MP Rupchand Pal.
According to the district administration, Pal had complained the play was being used as a ploy to campaign against the party. ‘Pancham Vaidik’, a group theatre in Kolkata has been successfully producing this play where noted stage personality Saoli Mitra is the lead actor. Ever since the group first produced this play in Kolkata, it faced opposition from the CPI (M) party organisation.
Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ is a strong political satire and critical of Stalin’s dictatorship. The CPI (M) in Bengal did not take lightly to the Bengali version of ‘Animal Farm’ and took it to be an attack on their political culture. Earlier also, the play was not allowed to be staged on various occasions in the state.
But in those days, the CPI (M) used to do that subtly by pulling strings to compel the organisers to withdraw invitation to this particular group theatre. Their opposition to this play grew more as its main artist Saoli Mitra became a major critic of the Left after Singur-Nandigram. She even openly sided with Opposition leader Mamata Banerjee and became a member of a railway advisory committee. But yesterday’s incident put the state government in a bad light as the district administration made it public that they had acted upon the complaint of Pal.
Later, the district administration tried to defend their position by saying that the group did not have necessary permission from the administration for amusement tax, use of microphone and from local police. The news that the play was not allowed to be staged by the administration attracted criticism from a number of prominent stage personalities. Even Rudraprasad Sengupta and Meghnad Bhattacharjee, who are known to have Left inclination, openly criticised the government’s decision.
The Hoogly administration’s decision to bar the play from being staged was not acceptable. Shyamal Chakraborty, a senior leader of the CPI (M) indicated the party would definitely demand an explanation from Pal.