Tools for transformation

By DEVENDRA DHUNGANA

DEC 27 -

The crowds are waiting, excited. Someone shouts out for the spectators to switch off their phones. They’re spilled all around the peepal tree, some having actually climbed onto its branches for a better view.

This is an audience almost 1,500-strong, who have come to Bhalohiya Pipra, in Rautahat, to watch Samaan Dharti, a street play organised by UNDP’s Livelihood Recovery for Peace Project (LRP) to mark 16 days of activism against gender-based violence in 271 villages in Mahottari, Sarlahi and Rautahat, aimed at the economic recovery and social mobilisation of poor and excluded communities. Most of the audience are themselves from such communities, and the objective of the drama is simple: The crowd is expected not just to be spectators here but also eventual actors in fighting gender-based violence. The play is among 87 such street drama events organised in the three districts.

Wedding music starts up, alerting everyone. All eyes are glued to a bride and groom who have just become visible. Applause, laughter and then the chanting of hymns. Once the ritual readings of mantras is over, the priest instructs the couple to exchange garlands, at which point one sees that both are young, much too young—the girl a mere pre-teen. But the spectators don’t appear to find this odd; this has been a way of life for them. They clap and celebrate.  

Soon, though, there is an intervention on the part of an educated woman, who claims that the bride and groom are under-age and should be allowed to study instead. But just as she attempts to list the adverse consequences of child marriage, she is reprimanded and chased away. The music and rituals continue.

Just then, the groom’s father speaks out to his in-laws, his voice like thunder: “Stop it! The wedding can only go on if the conditions outlined beforehand are fulfilled and the dowry settled! If not, you can forget this wedding!” Worried, the priest calls upon the man to settle down, telling him that marriages are made in heaven and to disrupt one would be a sin.

This notion further angers the man, who chides the priest, dismissing the idea of heaven and hell as nonsense. “They’re illusions! Earthy matters are a different thing! We agreed upon two lakh rupees and we haven’t received all of it,” he yells. “Where is the rest?”

The bride’s family joins the priest in imploring the man to calm himself, promising him that they will settle the dowry within a couple of months. The wedding is finally allowed to proceed, although not before a stern warning is meted out by the angry father about the repercussions of falling back on the promise.  

Four months later, a messenger arrives at the girl’s home to deliver some news about the bride: She is pregnant. Her parents are overjoyed at the prospect of soon becoming grandparents. Just a week later, though, there are complications. The girl is in pain and needs to be taken to the doctor, but her father-in-law refuses outright, citing her dowry debt.

Some time passes before a messenger once more visits the parents. But instead of revealing whether they’ve had a granddaughter or a grandson, he hands them a letter and darts off. When the letter is given over to the priest to be read aloud—both parents are illiterate—they learn that there had been difficulties with the delivery, and that the young bride has perished.

Many spectators are already in tears. They’ve heard this story before, of young girls dying in childbirth, either because they were not physically equipped to become mothers or because of a lack of access to health care.

Back on scene is the woman who’d previously advised against the marriage. But, again, before she can say much, she is accused of being a witch and is manhandled. Finally, the priest intervenes to tell all present that if anyone is to blame in the circumstances, it should be the parents for marrying off their children at such a tender age. Soon, all the characters appear turn by turn to speak on why the young girl died and why it was so preventable. The play concludes with the parents of both groom and bride being handcuffed by the police and taken away.

Plays like Samaan Dharti so craftily present and so artfully ridicule the ruthlessness, pain and sorrow associated with the dowry system and child marriage that audiences are able to immediately relate. These are, after all, situations each of the audience members have either witnessed themselves or heard of from parents. This is most apparent towards the end when the crowds are asked for their impressions, and many reveal that they too have undergone similar atrocities at the hands of in-laws or suffered similar tragedies because they’d been married too young. Fulpati Devi Mahara of the local Ma Saraswati Livelihood Group is among them, and she talks of how she had wed at 13 and lost two infants in the past.

Koshila Chamaar, of Matsari village in Rautahat, on the other hand, vows her community would never allow child marriage and witchcraft. Prabhawati Devi Bhagat of the same village says the street drama has opened up their eyes and she will continue to act against gender violence in her community.

The street drama campaign is wonderfully effective in underscoring the urgency to reach deep into communities nationwide to address some of the root causes of gender-based violence. While rallies and workshops certainly have their place in communicating messages of behavioural change, street theatre is a tried and tested tool because of its immediacy and directness and how closely into contact it brings the doers with their watchers…enough to give performers an idea of what motivates people and how best to appeal to that. As Meera Mishra of Mahottari says: “I had never realised street drama could be so powerful in sensitising the lettered and unlettered, the young and the old.”

Dhungana is a professional communicator with UNDP’s Livelihood Recovery for Peace Project