By Satya Narayan Misra* in Bhubaneswar, October 11, 2025: During an extensive interview with Pankaj Kapoor, the highly acclaimed actor, director and writer, he nostalgically remembered his days in National School of Drama (NSD) as a student in the 70s and Embrahim Alkazi who was the guiding light of NSD as the Director from 1962 – 77, when Hindi theatre sprung to life in the politicised capital of India. Mandi House was the vibrant cultural hub where the quartet of NSD, Triveni Kala Sangam, Sriram Art Centre and Kamani auditorium breathed the cadence of art, music, dance and theatre.

As the presiding deity of NSD , Alkazi’s prodigious talent in all aspects of theatre except costume where his wife was the moving spirit, the dynamic genius of Embrahim brought in his quest for intercultural and interdisciplinary thinking in artistic expressions that was both transformative and liberative for his myriad students like Sai Paranpayi, Nasir, Om Puri, Surekha Sikri, Uttara Baokar and Pankaj Kapoor , who later on lit the stage and celluloid though their exceptional talents and skill that was honed under the watchful eyes of the Master performer Alkazi. He would have been Hundred this month and a tribute to this colossus of theatre is in order, apart from Amal Allana, his daughter & redoubtable theatre director’s eminently readable biography of her father “Holding Time Captive”.

Melding Myth with Modernity

Alkazi’s early encounters and reception by the Hindi theatre wallas of Delhi in the early 60s is the story of a western educated Bombayite who was presumptuous enough to think he could teach Delhi theatre buffs a thing or two. As a second year student Sai Paranjpye recalls Ebrahim as a storm under whom a metamorphosis took place in the NSD overnight. Walking in to the den of Hindi wallah writers camp, Alkazi caught them unawares by picking up the works of the most celebrated and experimental of the Hindi new wave movement; Mohan Rakesh’s Aashad Ka Ek Din and Dharmavir Bharat’s Andha Yug.

Aashad, a play with a rural background, was the story of the Indian villager, whose lifestyle, pace and values were succumbing to the inevitable onslaught of urbanisation. The basic theme was autobiographical to Mohan Rakesh himself, where he identified himself with a classical playwright like Kalidas. This mix of history and the present entwined in to a single entity, was a modernist strategy that Alkazi too had attempted while contemporising myth. Aashad could be counted as one, he was able to internalize the experience in an exquisitely crafted miseen scene that sparkled with delicate, nuanced performances from young student actors such as Sudha Sharma as Mallika and Om Puri as Kalidas.

India had lost a war with China in 1962. Alkazi had chosen Andhaa Yug, set during the last days of the Kurukhetra war, when Aswasthama stood in rage, prepared to use the ultimate weapon to annihilate the mankind. It was just not the play’s topicality, its anti-war thrust that drew Alkazi to it. Alkazi tried to shrug off the baggage of European modernism he was carrying, embarking now on a foundational journey towards a deeper ‘discovery of India’.

Through Andha Yug, Alkazi came closer to learning about India’s value system and philosophy as explored in the Mahabharata epic, while Aashad gave him an appreciation of the artistic sensibility of the great Sankrit poet- dramatist Kalidas, India’s veritable Shakespeare. From now on, he would engage with the idea of India between the two polarities: India as a myth and India as a kind of documentary reality. Alkazi was introducing the idea that theatre was a performance art, not literature performed on stage. He was creating a language of performance that was distinct from the language of words.
A transformational Play

He was greatly drawn to Girish Karnad’s play Tughlaq who had confided in him how Tughlaq was the most idealistic, the most intelligent king ever to come on the throne of Delhi and one of the greatest failures also. And how in the early sixties India had also come very far in the same direction. Alkazi felt that this play effectively reflected the trials and opposition a visionary leader faced, while trying to function with a corrupt political scenario.

The cast of Tughlaq had some of the most brilliant actors, each painstakingly trained by Alkazi himself. There was Manohar Singh who playing Tughlaq, Surekha Sikri and Uttara Baokar were doubled as Sauteli Ma, Nasiruddin shah as the Machiavellian Aziz, , Rajesh Vivek as Najeeb. The young reporter members included Pankaj Kapoor, K K Raina, Raghuvir Yadav, a veritable who is whom of latter day cinema. Tughlaq was staged in 1972 at the Purana Qila (Old Fort) in Delhi, utilising the historical ruins as a backdrop for the dramatic spectacle. This production is considered a landmark event in Indian theatre, combining history, politics and performance to create a commentary on the reign of Tuqhlaq and politics of the 60s. Mrs Gandhi, who was very fond of Alkazi, watched this play.

Quality Theatre as National Theatre

Nehru’s dream of reconstructing the nation needed a powerful and unitary concept of ‘nationalism ‘to recognise all productive forces in the country. Culture was very much a part of the reconstructive process that needed to be systematized and brought under one umbrella and for this purpose, three national academies had been set up: Sangeet Natak Academy, the Lalit Kala Academy and the Sahitya Academy. The desire to modernise Indian theatre was part of the same reconstructive cultural policy. And Alkazi was the mascot of the theatre movement and Mandi House, the epicentre of cultural conflation and crescendo.

The Purana Qila festival in 1974, with Tuqhlaq, Sultan Razia and Andha Yugg became the most talked about cultural event of the decade He wanted to offer both the hoi polloi and the cognoscenti, including burqa clad women, high quality theatre that did not condescend to ‘popular taste, theatre that had a social relevance , that both instructed and entertained. This was Alkazi’s ideal of what constituted national theatre.

His Vision of an Artist

There have many stars in firmament of Indian theatre. Ebrahim Alkaji revitalised Indian theatre, Habib Tanvir, blended folk traditions with modern drama, Badal Sirkar revolutionised Bengali theatre by challenging conventional norms. They are like the great troika of Indian Cinema, Satyajit, Ghatak and Mrinal Sen. Amal Allana writes that Alkazi passionately believed that an artist belongs to no political party, has no religious ideology.

An artist has to distance himself from each one of these in order to see each one of these objectively. And finally he has to distance himself from himself. Alkazi wrote: It is our duty and moral responsibility to study history dispassionately, but with a passion for the truth, with humility and with a profound sense of responsibility and to ask ourselves seriously: What is the legacy that we shall leave behind. Pankaj Kapoor’s nostalgia about his mentor and Mandi House is understandable.

*Satya Misra had the rare privilege of watching Tuqhlaq in the ramparts of Purana Qila directed by Alkazi