School take role as nonviolence center

By Monicca Shanthanelson
Chart Reporter

In 1949, Darpana was a dream. Then came a school.

Darpana Academy of Performing Arts slowly took Indian classical dance to a new plane. New insights were provided and a reflection of the troubled society took shape in dance. Dance, drama, music, puppetry, classical, folk, contemporary, experimental, research, publications, films, and later videos, the activities of Darpana have increased a hundred-fold.

Today, Darpana is not only a center of excellence, a workshop for the arts where art and life meet and the horizon of language gets stretched, but also a center for nonviolence through the arts.

Operating from a culturally rich and tastefully decorated institution in the affluent residential areas forming the heart of Ahmedabad, Darpana was founded by Mrinalini Sarabhai and is now managed by her daughter, Mallika Sarabhai, who is an instigator of community projects. Mallika Sarabhai is the founder of Center of Nonviolence Through Arts. The Center, launched on Oct. 2, 1996, Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary, is housed at the academy which aims to focus the attention of artists from all fields of the arts and literature toward issues of violence. The purpose is encouraging them to create new works that would demand new thinking on related issues. It provides facilities for artists to come together and share thoughts and ideas about nonviolence. An annual festival of nonviolence at the academy's theatre presents new and unseen work. Children and young adults are encouraged to create paintings, sculpture, or other works exploring this theme. It commissions and invites performances dealing with the issues of violence, tolerance, and peace.

The project was launched with the celebrated performance "V for...." by Mallika Sarabhai. The Center offers competitions in writing one-act plays, which shed new light on issues related to nonviolence. The Center has organized a series of events for school children, and psychologists and therapists have been invited to discuss issues of violence. In her interview with the Indian Express on Oct 3, 1996, Mallika Sarabhai said, "Violence is a problem, it is not a solution. If my work is able to start a thinking process among even two people in the audience, then I will consider my work a success."

She is quoted to have said, "If you want violence and prejudices to be removed from the face of the earth, target the children."

In addition to running classes for students, conducting workshops, and giving many international performances, Darpana is involved in community development. It boasts of Jagruti, a school project for environmental activism like recycling, a value project on ethics in schools, and Parivartan, a project aimed at changing the attitude of tribal communities toward women.

Kailash Pandya, director of the department of theatre at Darpana, is involved with propagating the message of Gandhian nonviolence through theatre. Pandya works with children, parents, youth, and also with the community.

He believes violence starts from childhood, and it is the parents who unintentionally start this violence. His group teaches the children a lesson in nonviolence through theatrical performance.

Pandya gave an example of Darpana's production, Love and Hate. The play narrates the story of Gandhi being thrown out of the train in South Africa, a result of the discrimination against Indians. Gandhi molds this hate into a solution of love. He comes back to India, and when he sees the treatment that is being given to the "untouchables," Gandhi fights against it. He names these sutras (untouchables) Harijans (sons of the lord Hari), and he strives to bring about this conversion not only in the name associated with them but also in changing the attitude of the people toward them.

Love and hate is a celebration of how this change was brought about. It is a story of how a hateful thing was converted into a love-filled and productive result.

"Arts does not lecture, it shows,  Pandya said.  The message of love, hatred, nonviolence, and peace is given without language. This is indeed a powerful means of communication because children show children, and the audience is moved in that one of their very own is telling them the message."

Darpana conducts workshops for tribal people and slum dwellers when people from the same region participate in the production. The message is indeed powerful, and the objective of Darpana is the ultimate Gandhian ideal: to start the thought process, is definitely achieved.