Shakespeare-wallah: cultural negotiation of adaptation and appropriation

Abstract

Adaptation of Shakespearean plays for theatrical and film media in India was initiated in the mid-nineteenth century, largely as part of conceited efforts to introduce English education into the colony. The primary reason why, as is popularly believed, Shakespeare’s plays have stayed on the mass cultural consciousness is because his plays are universal, bound by no time and space. But what does it mean to be universal, or timeless? Or to put it in other words, if a Shakespearean play is transposed to a radically different time and space does it still remain Shakespearean? Can an adaptation of a certain Shakespearean text still remain Shakespearean in essence in spite of the replacement of the theatrical performativity retained in original text with the dynamics of cinematic performativity inherent in the execution of the medium? In this paper I would like to explore those Indian adaptations of Shakespeare that are without the aid of the “Shakespearean language”. I would like to take up Vishal Bhardwaj’s adaptation of Macbeth into 'Maqbool' (2004) and Othello into 'Omkara'(2006) in order to investigate and understand how Shakespeare can be and has been appropriated into the national ethos and also fitted into a very typically Indian socio-political setting of Northern India with all its class distinctions and existing social stratums and furthermore, how they can still function as independent works of art, with or without Shakespeare. My attempt will be to assess how Bhardwaj adapts and appropriates the Shakespearean plays to fit into particularized sociological and geopolitical issues of India without compromising the central strains of the plays.